


I'll Be Your Knight in Shining Armor and You'll Be Mine

by Cakepopple



Series: The Criminal Witch and His Knight of a Husband [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Kingdom, Angst, Archer Hunk, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Kinda, Knight Keith (Voltron), Knight Shiro (Voltron), M/M, Mage Pidge | Katie Holt, Protective Keith (Voltron), Protective Lance (Voltron), Queen Allura (Voltron), Witch Lance (Voltron), klance, ps they're married
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2019-10-28 22:56:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 155,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17796320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cakepopple/pseuds/Cakepopple
Summary: Being a witch had been illegal for years and Lance had spent just as long living in constant fear. Being married to the head knight of Altea, Keith, meant he had to hide how he was technically a criminal. It had left him with a lot to be scared about. But now, with the removal of the Anti-Magic Act, all his secrets were revealed to his husband and smoothed out. He and Keith were as happy as ever and everything was going well, until events from six months ago started coming back to haunt them. Turns out, Lance hadn't outgrown living in constant fear quite yet.Because, no matter how much reassurance Keith gave him, it didn’t help.Words aren’t exactly an effective last line of defense when someone is trying to kill you, after all.





	1. Scars That Won't Heal

**Author's Note:**

> Are you ready for the sequel?  
> Ain't ready for the latest
> 
> IN SHORT, for any new readers, this is a sequel to another fic I wrote and, while it can be read on its own fairly well, I recommend you read the other one first, for maximum enjoyment and understanding <3
> 
> ps happy valentine's day, here's my gift to all of you!

The hand around his wrist and the finger dragging across the yellowed pages of a spellbook were all his brain could focus on. Keith could hear the ups and downs of Lance’s voice as he explained a healing spell and how to use it, but there wasn’t much comprehension. He could pick out every crevice and every bump in the grip on his wrist, but why it was even there had been completely forgotten. There was an utterance of his name and it was muffled by his intense focus on Lance’s presence. He brought his hand mindlessly to his lips, subsequently dragging Lance’s as well, and kissed the lotioned skin of his husband’s knuckles. It smelled like coconuts. Or vanilla. He couldn’t quite tell as his attention turned solely to Lance’s eyes and no longer the plush feel and sweet smell of his hand. The brunet’s eyes crinkled and Keith let his own smile curve against the tanned flesh he’d just kissed. He licked his lips in preparation of a statement, but Lance twisted his hand free to flick his nose.

“You weren’t paying attention at all, were you?” His tone had dripped slowly into something snarky, but the corners of his eyes remained folded and the skin over his cheeks remained bunched. Keith smiled and it was something remorseless, despite the murmured apology pooling at the end of his tongue and tumbling out. “Ugh,” Lance sighed. He took both his hands and smoothed the beige pages of the spellbook out beneath his two palms. His face was trained on the book sitting atop the table in front of him, his eyes were flecked with focus, and Keith regretted the torture he’d subjected himself to. “You _asked_ me to teach you how to use healing magic so you really ought to listen.” Keith squished his outer thigh against Lance’s, which sat next to his own on their grey couch. It went without reaction. “Okay, so let’s start from square one,” the brunet’s words grew longer at the end as Keith slipped his fingers around his husband’s chin, pulled his gaze from the book, and licked his lips. Lance’s stare had followed the path of his tongue and his own mouth fell a centimeter open.

With a lidded look, the taller man inched his face just slightly closer. “Sorry, can’t help it. The teacher’s hot.” Lance rolled his eyes and ducked his head back toward the worn book sprawled across the table. Keith would have greatly preferred having something—someone—else sprawled along that wooden surface, and he had no quarrels voicing that desire, but just as he was about to let it all spill out, there was a loud chiming from the grandfather clock tilted against their silvery, grey wallpaper. His hand stopped its descent down Lance’s back and he frowned when his husband seemed to wake from his stupor, same as him. The brunet stopped arching his spine along where Keith had been caressing. “You sure you wanna go to this thing?”

Lance laughed, closing his spellbook with a startling crack. He pressed a finger to Keith’s pouting lips. “Hey, you promised you’d take me!” There was an argument to be had there, Keith was sure. Something about how he’d changed his mind and wanted to do something else—which, if paired with the right looks, would certainly get Lance’s eager approval—but he _had_ told his husband he’d go with him and he liked to consider himself a man of his word. With a huff, the knight stood up and nodded. “Just lemme get ready first.”

There was a frown coming to sit on Keith’s pensive features. The look in Lance’s eyes as he’d said that was wavering. It was a nervous flicker and his hands had withdrawn from his book so fast, their movement alone had seemed to be what drove him into a standing position. He scurried to their bedroom after that and Keith followed with his confusion hanging limply from his lips in an unspoken question. His emotions were bared plainly on his sleeves, but Lance took no notice. The knight had leaned against the doorframe while his husband flitted about their shared vanity in search of makeup. Keith felt his frown etch deeper into his skin.

He’d seen this routine, after all.

He’d seen it every day for the last six months. Ever since Lance had gotten that scar along his neck and none of the creams he’d been given were capable of removing it. Liquid foundation would be smeared uselessly along the pale stripe crossing just barely crookedly above his Adam’s apple, each and every day. And each and every day, it would remain unsatisfactory. Lance would tug a turtleneck over the spot with a pitiful sheen of tears in his eyes. His makeup covered fingers would smear the hem of the cloth, but it would always be apparent by the stretch of a fake smile to his lips that he didn’t have the heart to care. Keith never had the heart to, either, because every time he saw that weak smile, he found his heart breaking.

Noting today would be no different, Keith surrendered himself to the position of glum witness to the unfolding events. He sat himself on their unmade bed and saw the familiar scene play out in front of him. Foundation that wouldn’t seem to set, nervously nibbled lips, tangible frustration. And then nothing but resignation. He knew when Lance reached for his shirt drawer, it was all over.

There was something heavy in the pit of Keith’s stomach. It stifled his words and left his skin prickling like a sweltering heat. His body felt like a stove had been lit right beneath the layers of his skin and it had caught them on fire, so the smoke had goosebumps bubbling on his arms. There was a desire to tell Lance he had nothing to be ashamed of, but there were no words with which to act upon such a desire. Not within Keith’s grief stricken mind, at least.

“This is your favorite holiday, right?” Lance lifted his head at the question, attention settled on Keith in the mirror now and not the readjustments of the neck of his shirt over his scar. He nodded with a stressed smile. “Don’t you wanna wear something a little more festive, then?” He hoped the gentle tone to his voice masked his desperation; he hoped he didn’t seem too pushy. His stomach still had something sitting within it and he hoped it didn’t come through. But more than anything, he was hoping Lance would take some consolation from his suggestion and would realize he looked wonderful, scar or no scar.

The fake smile stretched further. “Ah, babe! I thought someone as emo as you would know a black turtleneck is perfectly appropriate!” He stepped away from the mirror and he twirled to face Keith. “This is celebrating the Goddess of Death, after all!” The makeup was tidied up and Lance teetered towards Keith, smile flashing with something more genuine when the taller man stood to meet him and tug him into a hug. He dragged his nose along his husband’s scalp and gripped the back of that _forsaken_ turtleneck like he was wringing water out of it. With a simple kiss to the short tufts of hair on Lance’s forehead, the hug was returned and Keith was certain at least some of his unspoken reassurance had gotten through.

When Lance backed up and began to tug Keith towards the door of their house, his smile was completely real. Keith mirrored it. It was something, at least.

The two stepped out into the reddened Castle Town, which was painted ruby with the clouded sunset’s hues. As the knight looked over to his husband, he saw the same colors reflected off his chestnut hair and curved lips. He could see the outlines of lanterns in his eyes, too; mirror images of the ones strung about the town in colors far too vibrant for a celebration of a Goddess of Death. They were pastel yellows and oranges, glowing gold at their centers from the candles within. Every year this festival came around, Keith liked it more and more because every year, Lance looked more and more lively in the fiery colors. His heart was swelling.

He bumped hips with his husband as they walked towards the town square, where the main events would take place. It was only five or so in the afternoon, so they had another hour before the festival officially ended, after which they’d made plans for dinner with the team of Altea’s best they’d assembled on their trip six months ago. Keith was looking forward to that just a little bit more than this festival, simply because he was famished and the queen’s food was known to never disappoint.

Upon reaching the square, Lance seemed to glow even brighter. “I’ve told you why I like this holiday so much, right?” Lance had turned to look directly at Keith, lacing their fingers together and flashing a grin that reflected all the joy surrounding them. Children were twirling about the cobblestone square, dogs were running free, and yet his smile was still the focal point of Keith’s attention. He smiled back with a gentle nod of his head to tell Lance that yes, he had explained, but Keith was always thrilled to hear again. How could he be anything other than ecstatic? Lance always came alive—ironically—when he talked about this festival. “As I’m sure someone told you, the Goddess of Death also represents a sort of balance. Life without death is meaningless and all that.” Keith nodded, squeezing Lance’s hand to let him know he was still listening. “And she’s also a super cool lady, ‘cuz like, the legend goes her son was a piece of shit,” the knight snorted, “so she kicked him right outta the Realm of the Gods for being too greedy or whatever. Like, just went ‘yeet’!” Lance had shut his eyes while explaining, and he reopened them so they visibly glinted with a sort of nostalgia. “I always wanted to be like her when I grew up. Badass, yet still described as benevolent.”

Keith silently laughed, then breathed, “I’d say you’re both of those.” Lance wrinkled his nose in a mocking type of smile, then tugged on Keith’s hand again. He was guiding him to a few of the booths around the area, just to look. “You also said this festival’s pretty popular where you’re from, yeah?” His husband nodded.

“Yeah, and now my favorite part will be celebrated again, since magic isn’t illegal anymore.” And then Keith was being dragged in yet another direction, toward a group of witches and mages in the center of the main square. They were all casting different spells; there were fire spells, electricity spells, smoke spells, and ones that looked to be substances without name. The different spells all had a distinct smell, too. Some were the smells of essential oils like vanilla and lemongrass, while others were the heavy stench of burnt bread. All together, they made a cacophony of something disgusting and Keith felt like gagging, but Lance had that nostalgic sheen to his face again, so he kept his stomach contents at bay.

Around these contestants, there was a squared off area marked by wooden fences wrapped in colorful flags. They were looped around the pale wood in three different colors. Red, orange, yellow. Red, orange, yellow. Each flag had the elegant swirls of the Altean insignia drawn in smooth, black paint on them. Lance scurried up to one of those barriers and crumpled a flag with his stomach when he pressed as close to the spellcasters as possible. Keith wondered if he’d jump the fence to join in the festivities personally, but the hand in his own remained firmly attached and no such advance was made. So he took the moment to observe how Lance looked when he was like this.

His hair was ruffled and curled about his head, brushing just above his eyebrows and the tips of his ears. His lips were smooth and parted in a toothy grin, so his smile reflected an innocent type of joy; it was the kind he got whenever he thought of his family. With his body curved over the fence like that, he looked as though he was top heavy. He tugged his turtleneck up—the movement was brief and without thought—and the sight of that ruined the serenity of the view for just a moment. Then, Keith looked back to his face and the heat in his heart returned. Blue eyes were wide and darting to observe each of the spells being casted, and Lance’s expression was soft.

The spells he was watching were all different, but they had a common goal. Each medium formed the figure of a bony woman with slender arms and billowing hair. They were forming the likeness of the Goddess of Death in hopes of winning the newly reinstated contest. By the size of the crowd gathering around the participants, Keith could see the event was coming to its conclusion. Well, at least, that _would_ have tipped him off, if the grip on his hand didn’t do it first. Lance was squishing Keith’s hand between his palm and the barrier as he leaned even farther into the roped off area.

There was a line of three people, three of the best mages employed by the queen, filing into the circle of participants to judge the contestants’ renderings. The brunet to Keith’s side seemed to get even more excited, so his palm was hot against Keith’s and his whole form shook with the intensity of his mirth. The head knight hadn’t ever been a huge fan of big festivals like this, but he never regretted coming, so long as Lance and his simple joy came along, too. When he turned back to the judges, they were circling the contestants, not unlike vultures rounding their prey, and the entire crowd had gone silent.

After far too long, the circling stopped and murmurs vibrated in the air. It had Keith feeling nervous, just from the way the air felt tense around him, like his surroundings were a plank of wood underneath intense weight. Like something was about to snap. One judge raised a gloved hand and everyone hushed, so Keith was no longer swimming in an anxiety he couldn’t pinpoint. He regretfully let his mind slip from counting the beats of Lance’s pulse beneath his palm and the way it made him feel whole, instead focusing wholly on the judge. The head knight watched the judge point at a smoky, vague figure and the ground beneath his boots shook when the mobs of people cheered and stomped their feet in response. Keith supposed that rendering had won the contest.

All of the other contestants let their illusions fall dejectedly, stepping out of the fenced area and leaving the sole winner to stand alone. Keith had never seen this competition in the annual festival before, as magic had been illegal until just six months ago, and he had no idea where it was headed. He’d expected a mere trophy or gift basket to be passed onto the victor, but instead, the wispy, grey, faded edges of their spell cleared. It was like he’d blinked water from his eyes or he’d squinted the sun from his lashes, since it felt almost unnatural how crisp the figure had become. And it was moving with an impressive attention to the details of how walking patterns looked, as though the illusion was an actual being.

Keith’s chin fell as he turned to Lance to pose a question of what was going on. He’d made it as far as sucking in a breath, before his husband was slapping his free hand lightly against his parted lips and shushing him. His attention was still trained attentively to the approaching form as he said, “Keith, this is the first time she’s visited in years, shut your quiznak!” At that Keith supposed he understood. Partially. He’d get Lance to explain the details later, like how exactly it all worked, but what he knew for now was that those swirling puffs of smoke had become the actual Goddess of Death.

She took steady, assured steps towards the boundary of the area she’d been summoned in, as she scanned the crowd with a sweeping gaze. Her head turned slowly one way, then slowly the other, until it focused on a child standing on their toes to lean their elbows against the railing and jut their chin out over the decorated wood. The clouds of the Goddess’s lips smoothed into a gentle curve at the sight. She stepped up to the child, letting her palms land across the plump cheeks of the young girl and leaving trails of dark ashes along her dust colored skin. Bending forward, she pressed charcoal lips to the pastel roots of the girls hair in a kiss. Her stance was regal; arms had slipped away from the girl to be folded neatly behind her spine, smoky lids came to rest over silvery eyes, and her knees remained locked, even as she bent herself over. Perhaps it would have looked stiff on anyone else, but with her, it exuded simple elegance.

The Goddess pulled back. As she did, a flash of ebony slipped from the roots of the pink hair she’d kissed and fell to the ends of that same hair. It was an almost unnoticeable streak—it was gone right as anyone could spot its appearance—and it was overshadowed by the way the woman took two steps backward and waved after she did it. A silent _thank you_ rose to her lips as she gestured to the surrounding festival. There were a few more seconds of appreciative scanning and, as Keith was drawn in by the mystery of it all, there was a squeeze around his hand. “You didn’t wear the jacket with the hood,” Lance murmured, upon gathering Keith’s attention. The taller man furrowed his brows at the observation, confused as to why his husband had said the statement so simply, as though it was something to be easily understood. Needless to say, it wasn’t.

It wasn’t, _then._ But when a sudden downpour began, Keith understood Lance’s words quite easily. The mirage of the Goddess of Death was snuffed, smoke turning to nothing other than scattered, wet ashes floating atop a forming puddle. Keith frowned because he should have _known_ this would happen because _obviously_ the Goddess would make her exit something dramatic—she was Lance’s favorite Goddess, after all. The knight hissed when he felt the icy rain seeping through his hair to prod at his scalp and he started sprinting in the direction of the castle. Lance was drawn along, too. The brunet was laughing loudly, the sound of it mixing with the slaps of raindrops on the cobblestone and the squelch of Keith’s soggy boots. His laughter somehow made the latter sound somewhat bearable.

Paper lanterns had been soaked through, until they could no longer support their own weight. Their vibrant colors mixed with the dirty, brown shade of mud when they hit the road and their candles spilled liquid wax on the stones as they tipped before they could completely cool. The scraps of shredded paper littered the slippery ground and Keith couldn’t count how many times he felt Lance stumble on them as they ran. “Keep up,” Keith chided, swinging a look over his shoulder at the dripping brunet behind him and pretending his heart didn’t stutter at the saturated ends of Lance’s lashes and the way they made his eyes seem brighter. The man made an offended noise at the order, before he slipped on yet another stray bit of soaked paper. “If you keep slowing me down, I’m just gonna carry you.”

A tongue swept the raindrops from Lance’s lips and he grinned. “I’m sorry, is that a threat? It’s a shitty one, if it is.” His strides seemed just a little longer as he took hasty steps to catch up with Keith. “C’mon, it’ll be a good workout,” he cooed. He’d opened his arms in a mocking question for Keith to follow through with his threat. His pleading was cut short, however, when the claps of their shoes on stone turned to the echoes of footfalls on the wooden bridge over the castle moat. Keith turned back forward. He didn’t spare a look at the ripples in the water under the bridge, but he did note how the water had a color somewhat like Lance’s eyes when it was in this weather.

They reached the inner halls of the castle and were let in by the guards immediately. Keith wrung his hair out over Lance’s head, just to be mean, and he relished the screech Lance released in response. The two left a trail of water in their wake as they walked leisurely to the dining room, frigid fingertips interlocked and wet palms pressed together. Queen Allura and all their teammates were already there, seated around the long, mahogany table, by the time Keith and Lance made it to the dining hall and tugged their adjacent chairs out. The wooden legs squealed against the stone floor. Their food was there already, too, and both men dug in eagerly, partaking in the half finished discussion their friends were having, as hastily as they had begun eat.

Between the talking and eating, Keith didn’t have much time to observe how everyone looked, but every now and then, while he chewed, the knight would let his gaze sweep the other seats around the table. In all, everyone looked fairly casual.

Hunk had confetti in his hair and dusted over his pale, yellow shirt, so Keith was sure he’d popped into the festival briefly. But he had gotten out before it started to rain, by the looks of it. It also seemed Pidge had been there, too, since there was a single bit of paper tucked in the hair behind her ear, like she’d missed one piece when shaking the others out. As for the rest of her look, she was in a worn, wrinkled, long sleeved shirt with a collar that didn’t fold quite right against her neck. Keith knew Lance would cringe at her inability to iron things correctly.

Shiro had a thick, leather jacket hanging over his shoulders so Keith couldn’t see what his shirt looked like, and his wedding ring looked freshly polished. The head knight considered asking where his husband was, since he was invited same as Lance was, but he remembered the man was on a mission before he could voice his confusion. Allura wasn’t in one of her standard dresses and her hair was frizzy about her head in a slept upon manner—she rarely got dressed up when it was just the six of them, chatting about non-business matters.

The conversation they had was easy, as is always true with good company, and no one picked any fights with the soggy state of the head knight and his husband. The sound of rain on the roof was barely discernible through the laughter and storytelling of the evening. As their dinner dishes were cleared, a lapse in discussion leaked comfortably into the air. Without the cover of words, the storm seemed louder and Keith could see Lance listen contentedly to it with shut eyes and a head tilted back so his face pointed at the arched ceiling. There had been the low rumble of thunder from outside all throughout dinner, so when a particularly loud clap of it echoed against the bricks of the dining room, no one thought anything of it. But, upon hearing the sound morph into a platoon’s worth of advancing footsteps, the whole room realized something wasn’t right.

Everyone stood abruptly, Keith the first to react, and their wary stares turned worriedly to the doorway and the approaching heavy steps. The hulking, old doors creaked slightly, and the head knight lifted a protective arm in front of Lance, like his unarmored flesh could do anything to stop an incoming attack. It proved useless against Lance, as he pushed it down, so he could stand next to Keith. The head knight didn’t appreciate the way he refused the shield, but a lone soldier slipped through a slender opening she’d created between the double doors and it became apparent he didn’t have the time to argue about it.

The soldier wasn’t an enemy, though. Her armor was all blue and white, elegant and poise, with a blue scarf around her shoulders. An Altean symbol was marked proudly against the center of her chest plate. She wasn’t an enemy, and the room got less tense as everyone noticed that. The armor the soldier had on was light—she was a castle guard and not a knight, after all—and left her whole bottom half and arms exposed. Just her chest and stomach were covered with the well polished, unblemished armor. And her stance was something between formal and approachable.

Allura took a cautious step towards her employee, fingers stretched just as cautiously in a silent inquiry of what was wrong. The armored woman blinked once, twice, and her face remained blank and emotionless. Then, as if something fell into place in her brain, as though the last piece of a puzzle completed some image behind her eyes, the soldier lunged forward. Her movements were liquid as she drew her sword and angled it at the queen’s neck, her armor glinting like the fangs of a predator. Both Hunk and Pidge vaulted themselves over the table at that and Keith only made it a step before Allura had handled the attack herself. Conjuring a weak electricity spell between her fingertips, she’d jolted the woman’s armor and had let her fall to the floor unconscious.

Keith looked to the doorway the woman had entered through and he saw the influx of even more attacking soldiers. The pine wood was bending under all the pressure and there was a snap before a swarm of hazy eyed warriors surged through. They scurried, like an overturned cup of insects being freed to the dining room, and each armorclad employee of the crown targeted one of the six people in the room.

Lance got to work taking them down immediately, using the same tactics Allura had. Keith left him on his own for a moment as he dove for the sword the first soldier had dropped; it wasn’t his own, but it would have to do for a single battle. He drew the weapon. To rejoin Lance, he had to step over the small collection of unconscious soldiers Lance had already managed to surround himself with. The others in the room were gathering the enemies’ dropped weapons as well, arming themselves with tools they couldn’t really use. Something was up, but these were their allies; they couldn’t kill them.

The head knight could read the turmoil on his husband’s expression at the prospect of fighting against people they knew. Lance was better with people than he was, but even he could recognize a few of these soldiers. He saw Iris, the young, eighteen year old girl who’d been pestering Keith to mentor her ever since she’d enlisted. He saw her eyes flash with pain before one of Allura’s spells knocked her completely out. He could spot Theo across the room, a man who’d just recently gotten married, and he could picture the horrified look that would cross his spouse’s face upon hearing the news that Shiro, the legend himself, had knocked him out with the hilt of his blade. His stomach dropped when the small form of their shortest soldier, Max, came bounding into his line of attack and he had to knock him out, same as Shiro had done to Theo.

There had to be an easier solution. These were _people._ He couldn’t keep hurting people he _knew._

And Lance wasn’t faring much better. The brunet felt sick. Each attack had his stomach rolling and he wasn’t sure which was worse: the visions of his acquaintances charging at him with such intense hatred and violence in their eyes, or having to strike them down just as mercilessly he would any enemy. Lance let his eyes land on the guilty frown wrinkling the corners of Keith’s mouth and the fogged over, pensive glare to his eyes. His husband caught his stare and returned it with a half-baked smile; the kind where it seemed like a cupcake with liquid batter still in the center, like the smile didn’t quite reach the part in his lips.

The brunet turned to look out the window in the hallway past the fallen dining room door. He swore, for a moment, he could see a figure silhouetted against the ashen clouds and glittering rain, but it was too dark outside to truly tell. Then, with a sudden crash that left the whole castle shaking, there was a flash of lightning and Lance was _certain_ someone was out there. There were the broad, sharp edges of armored shoulders and the tail of someone who wasn’t exactly human or Galran. He could also make out the way their arms looked just a little too long for their body. There was another brief moment of light, the whole hallway going white, and Lance noticed the figure was gone. A flicker of a tail flew up and Lance knew they’d caught him staring and were making their escape.

He shoved through the sea of inexplicably traitorous soldiers to chase after the fleeing enemy and a few of those soldiers trailed behind him as though linked by some invisible rope. His feet were burning with how heavy his sprinting footsteps were. He couldn’t make it to the high windowsill and crawl out through the same space the enemy had, so he darted to the closest exit he could find. Keith shouted his name worriedly from back in the dining hall; the shout was muffled by the sound of Lance’s panting breaths and the clanking of armor in the other room. The brunet swung the door to the outside open, so the smell of the pouring rain was heavier in his nose. He squinted through the wall of rain reflecting what little light was shining from inside. His shoes sunk into the mud. Through the heavy smell of the storm, Lance could pick up on the scent of some sort of spell, but he caught a glimpse of the tailed enemy passing the edge of the nearby forest, and the smell vanished. The sounds of armor in the other room stopped, too.

The soundlessness made it easy to identify the words of one of the soldiers who’d followed him. Lance whipped to face them the moment they let out the hissed, barely conscious beginnings of a word. He stared at their lowering weapon first, unable to be supported by their wobbling wrist, then he stared at the glossy film of sleepiness slipping over their eyes. They were no longer a threat, that much he could tell, but their words still shook him to his core. He knew something was _very_ wrong when they finished their woozied, murmured pair of words. Just two. Two measly words and yet they had Lance frozen with a slack jaw.

“For Lotor,” they’d said, right before they’d collapsed to the cold ground and tumbled into unconsciousness.

Lance felt like he was about to follow suit and his feet seemed to be sinking into the mud.

Keith had gone after him from the dining hall and the brunet approached his husband numbly. So Allura had been right. Lotor _was_ alive. And Lance had never been so scared in his life. The fear was tangible to Keith as his husband tumbled into his arms and it was audible in the weak whimper Lance released. To be entirely fair, Keith was terrified, too.

That said, he’d prepared himself for the possibility of this, so the shock of it all didn’t leave him quite as winded as it had Lance. Allura had warned him this was coming. Right after Lance had gotten his certification and had subsequently fallen asleep at the relief of it all. Keith had asked an open ended question about Lotor’s whereabouts that day, to which the queen’s response was primarily _we don’t know._ And they didn’t know. Six months later and they still didn’t know. After the battle with Lotor, after the prince had been dealt an indubitably _fatal_ blow, after Lance had been healed, and after Keith had passed out from exhaustion, the team had gone back to collect Lotor’s corpse. And yet, there’d been nothing there. Someone, _something,_ had taken the Galra prince while everyone had been distracted.

None of them knew where he’d gone—where he’d been taken—and none of them knew if he was still a threat.

Lance had found out about the uncertainty a few hours later, when he woke up and Keith told him. His reaction had been much like it was now. Numb. Apathetic. And yet so, _so_ horrified. Keith saw the way Lance was approaching him with fresh raindrops dotting his hair and dripping into his darting eyes. He dropped his blade and wrapped his arms around his husband. The brunet jolted at the touch, as though he’d been hurt by the action, but Keith knew not to be offended by this display. It happened every time he thought of Lotor; he always became scared of the whole world the moment his name came up and Keith was no exception to his list of fears. It stung, but it also filled the head knight with resolve—he’d hunt Lotor or his corpse down so Lance could rest easy. Maybe, if nothing else, this battle would get him just a little bit closer to that goal.

He almost missed Allura’s approaching footsteps due to the vengeance thrumming in his ears. She only became noticeable when she spoke. “Coran took some blood samples from our soldiers to see if there are any traces of magic or poison in their bloodstreams that could explain what just happened.” Lance had lifted himself from Keith’s chest to watch her speak with his wide, frightened eyes. He still had a hand tightly gripping the fabric along the taller man’s back, as though he’d always been woven into the threads of his shirt. Allura took note of his trembling knees with a swift sweep of her gaze down Lance’s seemingly more fragile form. Her lips pressed together in a flat line. “You two are welcome to spend the night here, so you can hear the results as soon as they come out.” Lance nodded eagerly and Keith was fine with the acceptance of such an offer. If it would ease Lance’s mind, it was worth it.

It didn’t ease his mind, though. Truly. It didn’t. As it was, nothing would have been able to.

Lance let Keith guide him to the guest room they always occupied whenever Allura invited them. He knew the way on his own, but he wasn’t too keen on using his mind as it was. Any thought led to the rise of phantom pain from all those bruises he’d had pressed along his stomach; the ones Lotor had left, in unbelievably large quantity, when Lance had tried to escape. He shuddered. With a breath that seemed too thick—near liquid in the way it filled his lungs—he reached for Keith’s hand to find solace and to ground himself. The other man gripped it back immediately, needing to do nothing more to ease the brunet. His eyes were still trained on the bland expanse of hallway before them, but Lance could see his worry etched into the wrinkles between his brows. It urged him to ease his own nerves, if for no other reason than to allow his husband a break from stress.

He forced his breaths to steady and his heart slowed in answer. The worry in his eyes melted with a few stray tears, then turned to complacency. If you ignored the tense, bunched up nature of his shoulders, the way the muscles of his neck were far too taught, he looked completely at ease. It did nothing to smooth the wrinkles on Keith’s face, though.

The head knight opened the door to their guest room slowly, as though he thought any loud creak would send Lance scurrying to the nearest nook to hide. He seemed taken aback by the easygoing look across his husband’s features, but the surprised look drooped into concern again when he read how fake the ease was. He nudged Lance into the room with a light pull on his hand, dragging him along as he sat himself on the edge of the bed. The brunet’s head dropped and his act was up. He was standing in front of Keith’s seated form, his eyes locked in place on the floor and his face twitching when Keith brushed his fingers comfortingly along his cheekbones. An apology was cooking in the back of his throat, an apology for how shaken he was over something so—in his opinion—trivial, but Keith spoke and cut it off.

“What can I do to help?” Lance’s stare left the floor. His eyes scanned the sincerity woven over Keith’s expression like his face was a magnet for it, like concern was a plant and his eyes were a garden. Inky bangs fell over the anxious upturn to his brows and the picture frame of the rest of his dark hair around his face had him looking smaller and more timid. Lance’s head curled back to look at the carpet beneath his shoes in a vain attempt to avoid that pitying gaze. He scrunched his toes inside his boots rhythmically to distract himself from the hitch in Keith’s breath when he saw Lance begin his reclusive behavior. His eyes shut to try, fruitlessly, to ignore the way the gentle hand against his cheek slipped down to the back of his head.

There was a nudge there, like Keith wanted him to lift his line of sight, but Lance ignored it. His eyes remained downcast, but his fist lifted to rap twice, lightly, on Keith’s collarbone. It was an action the taller man had become accustomed to. When, on the rare occasion it was so, Lance didn’t feel like talking—when he feared his voice would give out before it could form a single word—he’d ask for help silently, with a series of actions he never explained, but that Keith eventually understood on his own. The two knocks came again, even softer this time, and the head knight slid himself away from the edge of the bed. His hand slipped, regretfully, from the hair above Lance’s nape and the brunet lifted a bent leg to rest against the edge of the bed. He followed Keith, still wordless, further onto the bed. When the knight’s back hit the headboard, Lance echoed the stopping motion briefly, then let his body fall forward and against Keith’s chest. His nose tucked into Keith’s neck, a feeling of guilt resurfaced.

“Sorry,” he murmured. A hand drifted to cup the curve of his spine and the neck he was pressed against shifted as Keith rested his cheek atop the damp locks of brown hair. “I freaked out. I don’t know why—I just—his name… it makes me,” his words were cut off with a gulp as his fear of his voice dying off was realized. “I don’t know. Scared?” That wasn’t right. That wasn’t the word he wanted. He thought about it; the feeling of it all. _Uneasy._ The feeling of his heart dropping into his stomach and melting into a thick liquid that sloshed about with every step. _Queasy. Vulnerable._ The feeling of being able to feel his pulse so strongly, of being acutely aware of it in every vein, all at once, as though it were a current passing through him. _Shaken. Choking. Heavy._ The feeling of being too paranoid to close his eyes, like there was someone lurking around every corner, or like he couldn’t spare even a moment of mindlessness because there was some fatal danger just _waiting_ for the opportunity of a fallen guard. And yet, he couldn’t _help_ being mindless because everything was _too much_ and he couldn’t keep track of it all. Not while he was freaking out, he couldn’t. _Defenseless, on edge, overwhelmed, burdened, uncertain, suffocated._ Scared wasn’t the right word. Pressing his lips more tightly against Keith’s neck, almost as if he didn’t want his husband to hear, he breathed a more appropriate descriptor. “Helpless.” It was a word, but it still didn’t begin to cover what he felt.

Keith tugged a palm further up Lance’s spine to ground the brunet with a ginger grip upon the lump of bone at the base of his neck. “It’s alright. We all have things that make us feel like that.” There was something written there, between the lines of Keith’s words, underneath the uppermost layer of his statement. It was a nagging tickle at the back of Lance’s mind and a nudge for him to think. His mind flitted to what Keith’s _thing_ could be, but his own emotional turmoil acted as a leash and yanked him away from the pursuit of that thought. He landed in something bitter, bitter towards himself, and the taste of it pooled against the back of his tongue.

“But not everyone becomes so completely _useless_ because of them—”

“Stop.” A second hand replaced the first one where it had been in the small of Lance’s back. It bunched the fabric of his shirt in an unfaltering grip. Unfaltering, but still trembling. “You’re not useless.” His voice rose in emotion and it seemed to billow like a sort of smoke from frustration. It was thick and it sounded like Keith was choking on it. “You almost _died,_ you have every right,” a break in which his audible frustration simmered off, “you’re allowed to freeze up, Lance.” The brunet felt validated by the statement. He didn’t need Keith’s permission to have emotions, obviously, but knowing his husband supported how natural they were was comforting. “You know that, right? That there’s nothing wrong with being uneasy about almost dying?” When he put it so bluntly, it made sense. Lance had felt like he was staring at an upside down painting, trying to piece together what it was of, and Keith had come in and flipped it for him; it was all how it should have been.

Truly, Keith had an unfair knack for effortlessly doing that—calming Lance—like that.

Maybe not effortlessly, though, if the tight grip on Lance’s shirt was any indication.

But the brunet nodded, finally agreeing that, yes, it was acceptable for him to freeze up, but simultaneously realizing he had no need for it. Because Keith was there, against his nose and beneath his ear, and he could afford to shut his eyes because, if there _was_ something waiting around the metaphorical corner, Lance had a watchful gaze over his shoulder to spot it. Not to mention, he had someone to help him take whatever that something was down. Someone to fight by his side, should Lotor come back.

So, with that reassurance leaking through his bloodstream and with the trickle of rain steadily down their blinded window, Lance shut his eyes fully. The hold on his shirt loosened and he assumed Keith had fallen asleep. He kicked his boots, which were crusted with mud, off his feet while moving as little as possible, so as not to wake his husband. And then, feeling entirely and comfortably calm, he too succumbed to the tug of sleep on his mind.

Calm. Last he remembered, he’d been calm. And yet, now he wasn’t. He wasn’t calm at all because no longer was he in his husband’s embrace, with his backup and his watchful eye in case of danger. Now Lance was somewhere else. He was _back there,_ where he’d been with Lotor. In the caves. Those _fucking_ caves. _With Lotor._ With an urge to escape. With an urge to get back to Keith. With an opening to do just that, with the _stupidity_ to act upon it. With Lotor’s turned back and an _open door_ and the stream of—what he’d thought to be—light from _outside_ and the freedom that accompanied _outside._ He’d been there with hasty steps towards that light. And he’d been there with mistakes. And he was there _now,_ doing it all again, without a single way to stop himself. He knew what was coming, he knew what was coming, he knew _how to stop it._ But he could do nothing. There was nothing to be done when that light of freedom turned out to be nothing more than the flicker of a light in another part of the caves and the flicker of his damnation. Just like it had been countless times before.

And he could feel it all. His mouth had been gagged, his hands bound, so he had no way to stop the clammy feeling of an icy grip on the back of his neck. Keith had placed his hand there before, hadn’t he? Last Lance remembered, that’s where his hand had been, right? Where was it now? Where was Keith? And then there was a firm tug backwards that had his brain throbbing and unable to piece together where his husband had gone. A thud. He could both feel it and hear it as he collided with the ground Lotor threw him towards. His head was scrambled as it hit the stone. Another thud. This one was sharp, a heel against his stomach, aimed and twisted for maximum pain. And it repeated. Over and over and over, until Lance could do nothing but release muffled screams of agony directed at the emotionless, tear-blurred face of someone who was acting with far more angry emotion than was visible on his expression. That emotionless face, Lotor’s emotionless gaze and unseeing eyes, were what haunted him most. They were on the insides of his eyelids more than once a day.

Lance would have thought he was about to throw up, had he possessed any food or water in his stomach to release. He would have thought he was going to die like this, too, had he not seen and felt this all before and had he not been clinging to the useless hope of Keith’s arrival. He’d done that the first time, too. Through the hot formation of bruises and through the spiking shots of pain on his abused stomach, he focused on Keith, once again asking himself where he was. He needed help. He needed _help._ He pleaded, past the cloth stuffed in his mouth, for Keith’s help, but he didn’t know where his husband was. Where had Keith gone?

The truth was, he hadn’t gone anywhere. He was there, right there, in one of the castle’s guest rooms, stirred awake by the shuddering breaths of the man atop him and the hot tears leaking down his neck. He was _right there._ The head knight had thought someone had come in with the results to the tests of those blood samples and they were shaking him awake to let him know. But that shaking—that incessant, insistent trembling—wasn’t a wakeup call. Not in the traditional sense, at least. It was Lance, panicking and crying and quaking from the fright of some nightmare Keith couldn’t see.

Keith slipped his hand from behind Lance’s head to one of his shoulders so he could nudge him awake without scaring him further, and the brunet flew up. He tumbled back, eyes wide and unseeing, and fell over. The man landed off of Keith, on his spine, and against the mattress they were sharing. He landed with his hands clutching his stomach, too. And, though Keith hadn’t been able to see the nightmare before, he could certainly see it now, in those protective hands; they were shielding the brunet’s stomach from more blows that wouldn’t come and they were tracing the lack of bruises along the flesh. Keith knew where Lance had thought he was upon waking up. And he knew he’d been dreaming of those atrocious injuries Lotor had given him when he tried to escape.

And Lance was still crying.

A hand strayed from where it used to grip his shirt and it stuffed over his mouth to bury sobs beneath a sweaty palm. Keith leaned slowly forward, gauging his reactions and deciding if it was okay to touch his husband as he was. The brunet gave him an affirmative answer when he sat up again and immediately attached himself to Keith’s shirt. Lance’s hands were shaking just as much as the rest of him, the knight realized.

“Hey,” Keith breathed, somewhat awkward, but mostly used to this routine. Like the turtleneck and like the double knock against his collarbone, the nightmare routine had become commonplace over the last six months. It was at least twice a week. At least twice a week Lance went a night without sleeping. At least twice a week Keith did, too—though he wasn’t as bothered by it as Lance was because he was willing to sacrifice his sleep to be sure his husband felt safe. At least twice a week Lance masked the rings around his eyes with makeup, but realized it was useless when he woke up crying and the makeup rubbed off and mixed with the tears sliding down his cheeks. At least twice a week the black circles became unbearably apparent. “Hey, hey. It’s okay now. You’re safe.”

Keith swept his hands up and down Lance’s back while the man wailed into his neck in disagreement. “But what if I’m not? That soldier, they said… What if Lotor is coming back?” The brunet shoved away from Keith, without aggression in his action, but still driven by the lingering fear from his nightmare. His voice had been loud, but not angry. His eyebrows were drawn together, but not in a scowl. He was just watery and crying. His lips were wet with tears and raw from biting and his nose was dripping. His action would have seemed angry and directed at Keith, had it not been for how _mortified_ Lance looked. No, he didn’t look at all angry; he only looked _helpless,_ as he’d described it earlier. “I can’t fight him!” Lance shut his eyes and swung his head back and forth as he let it fall into his hands. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes and the sleep deprived smudges of black underneath. “I can’t fight him, Keith,” he choked, voice cracking in every one of those words and impacting Keith the most at the utterance of his name in such a miserable manner.

He wanted to shout out how Lance didn’t have to fight Lotor because he had Keith this time. Keith would fight for him. If Lance froze up, if he cowered in fear instead of standing up and fighting, Keith would take Lotor down for him. He wouldn’t let anyone take his husband like that again. That was the kind of mistake he’d only let happen once. But no words left his lips as Lance collapsed forward and against his chest again.

The head knight hung his head over the brunet’s shoulder, so he could rub his back and hug him, but also so the smaller man couldn’t see the way Keith was near crying, too. His mouth fluttered between open and closed uselessly, as all sorts of replies came to mind, but none of them came to his tongue. He resigned himself to silence for a moment, focusing on merely calming Lance back down and not on powerful promises.

He did think, though.

What he’d said earlier, about how everyone had things that made them feel useless, was what he thought about. How he’d meant it for himself, just as much as anyone else. How he’d known exactly what his weakness was. How here it was, Lance broken—shattered, really—in his arms and here he was, unable to fix it. This was it, what made him feel utterly helpless and had him freezing up. He didn’t know what to do.

His lips opened to release reassurance. “Lance,” he sighed. He’d intended to tell his husband his intentions; he’d intended to tell him he’d make _sure_ Lance was safe. Before he could say what he’d intended to say, though, the door to their guest room swung open and in popped a bright face and a handful of papers. Those papers rustled and Keith cursed the way that noise muffled his thoughts and wiped away anything he’d thought to say. Perhaps the man at the door, who Keith could just barely tell was Coran, hadn’t been able to see the couple crying in the dark, because he made his announcement unabashed and with far too much energy.

“The lab results are finished!”


	2. What Lies Behind a Smile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to post this like twelve hours ago, but I passed out while proofreading ;-;  
> I’m sorry it took so long! I should be able to do weekly updates, if nothing else, I promise y’all that much :))

Keith would have thought, with how distraught his husband was, Coran’s sudden appearance would have startled Lance further. He would have expected the brunet to shudder away from the opening door, or to jump up and pretend he hadn’t been crying. But when the door flew open and the announcement was made, the man in his arms did close to nothing. His head hung a little lower and his nose brushed Keith’s collarbone slightly. His fists got tighter around the black shirt within his hold. They got so tight, Keith swore he’d tear the fabric of his clothes with his short nails.

Then, head still hung, he released Keith and stepped off the bed. With the determination and stern, cold eyes of someone who’d been a soldier for years and not just a partial one of six months, he straightened his spine and looked towards the pale man in the doorway. He turned as though his cheeks weren’t splotched red and as though there weren’t trails of flaking saltwater around the ridges of his nose. His head nodded and it should have been stiff, jerky, and indicative of all the tears he’d been shedding, but it was smooth and steady. The movements were as hitchless as the slice of a blade and they hurt like it, too. It cut something shallow into Keith’s heart and left him aching. He was flattered Lance bore his true feelings to him, but it still stung to see him carrying on like nothing was wrong when it came to everyone else.

After that, the brunet faced Keith and his sincerest emotions flickered in the dark pools of his eyes, which were shaded by the midnight-shrouded room. The head knight stood up and joined him next to the bed. He flicked the dried shards of deceased tears from along Lance’s cheeks and the smaller man gave a wavering smile in response. Like a dried leaf in the rain, Keith thought. A real, loving look, but flimsy like the leaf bending under the weight of all those raindrops pooling in the cup of its shape; tears had collected against the bunch of Lance’s lips in much the same way and they too were curling downward, just slightly. 

Keith situated himself next to Lance and his husband leaned against his shoulder, even as they both began to move forward. Barely perceptible was the tremble of Lance’s hand as it gripped his own in a hold that was also as flimsy as that imaginary leaf. As Coran guided them to the lab the blood had been tested in, Keith thought more on that leaf. Lance’s leaf wouldn’t be green, he figured. Lance would be something brighter and more attention grabbing. He’d be red. Red like the heart he wore on his sleeve and red like the color of his nibbled lips. Red like the burn of a fire, the fire that set Keith’s stomach ablaze with worry whenever Lance stifled his emotions like he was doing now. It was funny, with how much his husband liked blue, that red seemed so much more his color. A sad kind of funny, though it was hard to categorize heartbreak as any kind of funny, Keith supposed. But… when Lance was like this, with sad eyes and watery lashes, maybe he was right after all; maybe blue  _ was _ his color. Something washy and weak, something hard to look at, like a sick child or a limping dog. Those types of things were blues, right? But the vibrant, warm personality he usually had was far from that cool color. It was only during times like this he reminded Keith of something slower, thicker,  _ sadder. _

Over the past six months, he’d begun to miss the frequency with which warm colors used to paint his features. Blushes across his cheekbones, like a spill of red watercolor that went all the way over the bridge of his nose and made his eyes appear even more vast. That same flustered color on the tips of his ears, like someone had dipped the ends of his chestnut hair in pink lemonade and let the color run over his flesh. The way the sunlight would sprinkle flecks of gold in his hair and eyes, like someone had shaken their hands dry of yellow paint next to him. Times like this, though, times when they mentioned Lotor, Lance was anything but those warm colors. He was blue, at best, but really, he was probably grey because around everyone other than Keith, he stuffed his concerns and fears deep inside himself to fester like raindrops in a stormcloud. A storm cloud covering the warm colors of the sun Keith loved so very much.

By the time they reached the lab and saw the whole team there, Lance’s hands had stopped shaking and he was no longer attached to Keith’s side in desperation. He remained close, so their hands were still interwoven and tangled at the tips of their fingers. Their shoulders brushed every now and then, too, but his fearful clinging had ebbed away. Keith was glad that the head that had been placed once more on his shoulder was no longer weighed with open sorrow, but he was confident the sorrow wasn’t really gone. He only wished there was a permanent solution to this ceaseless anxiety. 

When Allura cleared her throat, he hoped the following words would be that permanent solution. “So, what we’ve discovered,” she murmured, dragging long, manicured nails through her bedhead and passing the room slowly so her nightgown fluttered about her ankles like waves. Her fingers moved to knead the corners of her eyes. “We figured out there’s no poison in any of the blood samples.” There was the sound of her nails clacking against one of the vials of blood and Keith felt his heart drop in disappointment at her words. No lead, then? “But there are remnants of, well we  _ think _ they’re mind control spells. In all of the samples.” 

There was a  _ but _ in there somewhere. The way her voice trailed off, the pitch at which she spoke her last word, said as much. Keith shifted his stance from one foot to the other nervously and he drummed his free fingers against his thighs. He wanted to get moving, to find Lotor or whoever had taken him, and to handle the issue  _ now. _ Cracking his neck one way, he opened his mouth to urge the queen to continue and to speak that poorly concealed  _ but.  _ Coran spoke first, before Keith’s open mouth served any purpose, aside from looking foolish.

“But the spell isn’t much to go on,” he huffed, picking up a vial and rolling its cylindrical, glass shape in his palm. “We can’t track its source, since there’s only a very small trace left. And it’s a variation of magic we’re not familiar with in Altea. Different way of casting it and all. All we know is whoever cast the spell wasn’t trained by Alteans.” Keith’s spine curled as he slouched. He wore a dejected, frustrated frown along his scowling features. His thighs burned with something anxious, as though he were physically straining himself by resisting his urge to get moving, to find and solve the problem. His palms were sweaty and Lance took the one he was holding and wiped his thumb along the beads of sweat forming in the creases. He turned to Keith and smiled in a way that made Keith feel so helpless, just like before.

Like when Lance had been crying, his smile was also a jab to Keith’s heart. Not because it was insincere—because it wasn’t—but because Lance was the one who was scared and yet he was also the one doing the comforting. All because it felt like something was pushing him forward with a shove to the skin between his shoulder blades, but he couldn’t follow the push, regardless of how hefty it was. He was antsy because of it. And Lance was the one helping him, despite being the one who truly needed the help. That fact, how Lance needed help, was written in every smudge of sleep-deprived grey beneath his eyes.

Everyone else in the room looked equally frustrated. They all slouched similarly to Keith and they puffed dejected sighs. “So,” Pidge started, “are you saying there’s nothing we can do to stop this from happening again?” Her question was aimed at the queen and Allura hunched over the table she was closest to, both of her elbows on the metal and knocking vials so they rolled about. She shook her head. Pidge brought her thumbnail between her teeth and her brows furrowed in thought. “There’s gotta be someone who can trace the magic, though. Or someone who can tell us where this type of spell is common, at least.” 

No one spoke in answer. It seemed no one had any idea of who that  _ someone  _ could be. Until something clicked in Hunk’s mind and he repeated the click in his fingers with a snap at the revelation. He turned to Lance and the brunet lifted his head blearily from Keith’s shoulder to look back at him. He and Hunk had become close over the past six months, so Lance could read the beginnings of an idea in his eyes. Something attentive and pensive. “What were you telling me the other day, Lance?” No answer save for thin, furrowed brows. Lance had probably told him a lot of things over the past few days, since he’d invited Hunk to have dinner with he and Keith a couple nights ago. How was he supposed to know what Hunk was referring to? “About your family?” Like that helped; he talked about his family more than anything else, probably. Well, maybe not more than Keith, but he still had no idea what Hunk was talking about.

Keith seemed to, though, since he stepped forward with the start of a stretched grin and the knowledgeable point of his finger at Hunk, like he understood. “Right,” he said past his growing smile. He turned to face Lance next. “Right! Your family members are all talented spellcasters, right?” Lance took his hand back from Keith’s unpointed one to cross his arms over his chest. A pout flattened his lips.

“Yeah, but they’re still Altean, so they still wouldn’t know the spell because, if you  _ remember,  _ Coran said it’s a variation of a spell we don’t have in Altea.” His tone was exasperated. 

“But they live in a village near the border of three other countries,” Keith responded. His eyes shone at the prospect of figuring something out. Of moving forward in his search for a solution. “They’ve probably come into contact with all sorts of variations.” The queen looked up from watching her fingertips roll a vial around the metal tabletop she was leaned against. She seemed to be considering the idea Hunk and Keith proposed, her lips pressed together and her fingers resuming motion in the form of drumming patterns. Not for long, though, because she quickly agreed.

“Someone should bring them some samples, then,” she said, straightening her spine and scooping a couple vials into her hand. Moving to stand in front of Keith, she widened her stance to make up for the lapse of leaderly presence her bed head held. “You can bring them.” She looked to Lance to inform him of how she meant both of them. “But tomorrow.” Allura passed the blood samples into Lance’s palm. “It’s midnight. I’m not preparing a mission right now.” Rubbing her eyes again, she turned away and took steady steps to the door of the lab. Everyone trailed wordlessly and tiredly behind. With the exception of Lance. 

He followed her, next to Keith, but he was very far from silent. His words were quiet, but fast and his face looked completely different. It had contained just a flicker of sadness all night, but it was gone now, as he rambled about how excited he was. He’d get to see his family, after all, and he hadn’t seen them since before he moved to Castle Town. That’s not to say the village was far, though. It was a day or two on foot, tops, but up until recently, it had been too dangerous to travel that distance.

His family lived in a village in the pretty desolate desert which lied a fair distance to the west. It was a desert plagued by immense numbers of vicious creatures only the locals knew the names of and it was too dangerous for Lance and Keith to cross. Or at least, it  _ had  _ been, until a very short time ago. No more than a year ago, the people living in the desert, specifically the ones from Lance’s home village, had developed a new spell with which they could drive those monsters away, but the couple hadn’t found the time off of work to visit—which was mainly Keith’s fault, as he was the head knight. So this would be the first time Lance had seen any of his family members in over half a decade, with the exception of his mother, since she had come to their wedding. 

It was natural that Lance was this excited and the way he waved his arm in circles as he talked, the way he made such animated movements, had the glass of the blood samples clinking together. They made noises that seemed to suit Lance and his mood. They twinkled, like the wind chime Lance had insisted they hang in their bedroom window and like the bells he had draped in the doorway to his shop. The vials made cute, small, almost unnoticeable sounds, like the slight giggle to Lance’s voice as he recited the names of all the family members he’d get to see. He was walking backwards in front of Keith, with his eyes shut and his one free hand gripping Keith’s, so the pale hand moved in just as lively of movements as the rest of Lance. The head knight smiled, happy to see his husband looking  _ forward _ to something, instead of thinking back to and dwelling on six months ago.

“I’m not looking forward to the walk there, though.” He was still rambling, but Keith didn’t mind. “It’s gonna be so  _ hot. _ And you and I can’t even teleport there because we have a spell against that for safety reasons.” Keith’s chest fluttered at the way Lance still referred to the people from his village as a  _ we. _ The way he had such a lasting bond—a bond that was stronger than all the miles between he and his family, a bond that transgressed all the years he’d gone without seeing them, a bond that made him so  _ happy _ —was so foreign to Keith, but so, _ so _ cute to watch unfold. He wondered if Lance referred to their marriage as a  _ we _ when Keith went on long missions. As he watched Lance reopen his eyes and as he heard the words he was speaking become muted from the distraction of the familiar mirth in his eyes, he was certain he used  _ we  _ in reference to their marriage. That loving look in his eyes as he talked about his family was the same as the one Keith saw every time Lance looked at him. That same soft, tender droop of his lids Lance wore when he told Keith he loved him. “You’ll get to meet my little cousins, too! My mom’s been writing me letters telling me about all the mischief they’ve been causing, so I’m sure you’ll get along with them great.” Keith brought a hand to his chest in mock offense at the playful insult. 

They’d been walking back down the hallway to their room, since it was too much effort to go all the way back home just to sleep for a few hours, and when they reached the guest room and reopened the door, Lance all but launched himself into bed excitedly. “Are you even gonna be able to sleep tonight, Lance?” The head knight raised an eyebrow as he lifted a leg under the covers to follow his husband into bed. In response, the brunet shrugged and sprawled himself wide on the sheets, tossing the bedspread off of his form in the process. It bunched by his ankles. His grin was still as large as it had been when he heard the news they’d be visiting his family; it took up as much of the skin on his face as he took up of the width of the bed. At that moment, looking upon him and all that joy scrawled across his face as though he was the canvas for a painting in a color labeled  _ happiness, _ Keith came to a realization he’d come to quite a few times before: Lance made cheeriness look better than anyone else could make it look.

Keith grew up thinking he hated people like Lance. He’d gone his whole life thinking people who were that effortlessly happy, who were so irritatingly optimistic, and who made such halfwitted jokes, were nothing more than a daft nuisance. But then he’d actually met one, gotten to know one, and he’d gotten to see beneath that overpowering grin and inside the core of who Lance was, and he’d decided he’d been wrong. He’d seen the mellow love Lance had, the way he could drop his overbearing giddiness at the first sign of it being too much for Keith, the way he adapted to everyone he was around in order to be sure he didn’t go too far; he’d grown to like that blinding smile. Because when he got to know Lance, after when they’d first met and before he got that date he’d been promised, he’d found himself sharing those smiles. Mirroring them. He’d found himself taking real, genuine joy in Lance’s friendship—more than he’d ever felt before. He’d never been friends with anyone his age until Lance. 

And then, after a few months of knowing one another as just friends, Lance finally followed through on that promise he made when they first met and Keith decided he liked that smile in a way that was far more than platonic. Lance had gone running up to the Altean soldier barracks that particular morning, kicked in the dining hall’s door, and narrowed his eyes on Keith. It had been a Saturday and Keith had been eating his normal, drab oatmeal breakfast across from Shiro as the knight blabbed about something that quickly became overshadowed when Lance tossed himself right on the bench next to Keith. The wooden table was old and worn—Iago had never cared for getting his knights better equipment—and it seemed as though it would crack under Lance’s weight. 

Keith gave him a look, but Lance just stared at Shiro long enough, and apparently meaningfully enough, for the knight to nod and wave him off. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation between that flick of Shiro’s wrist and the motion of Lance hopping back up and tugging Keith with him. The spoon of oatmeal fell out of Keith’s mouth and he’d shouted something vulgar back at Shiro, damning him for doing nothing as he was dragged away. He only stopped his grumpy charade when Lance had finally taken him out of the dining hall. 

“What the hell, Lance?” There was still a lingering flicker of a bitter tone in his words. The brunet kept his hold tight around Keith’s wrist and, directing the two towards the heart of Castle Town, he hastened his speed. Keith felt his face morph into somewhat of a scowl at the lack of an answer. He started to get a better look at Lance, though, and the back of his neck began to burn. At a glance, he didn’t look all that different that usual; his clothes looked like something he’d normally wear, his face was the same level of beautiful as always, and the smile on his lips was identical to the ones Keith had grown to not completely loathe. When Keith looked closer, however, something about him was just slightly different and it was near impossible to put a finger on why. Maybe his hair looked less like he’d just rolled out of bed, maybe he had a bit of makeup on, but maybe it was nothing at all, because he always made Keith’s heart stutter like that. 

The sight of him looking radiant was almost enough of a distraction for Keith not to notice the way Lance’s palm slipped from around his pale wrist and into his own grip. It was certainly enough for him to miss the way it should have bothered him. 

“Hey,  _ you’re _ the one who told me I should take you on a date to pay you back. And Shiro gave me permission, so you have no basis for an argument.” Lance flashed a smile at Keith, then to the joining of their hands. The second look was just a little bit softer and Keith could feel the hand in his own tremble a miniscule amount. The brunet turned his nose back up after that lapse in confidence, facing it at the cloudless sky. Keith watched the movement, admiring the way his shadow fell across Lance’s face because, somehow, the sight of his own outline so close to Lance’s skin felt indescribably right. So did the way he could see his own face looking back at him in the shine of those bright eyes. Even without his shadow or his reflection, he decided he still would have wanted to watch that dip of cheekbone and that smooth flesh because Lance was definitely something worth admiring and Keith being there too was certainly something equally deserving of appreciation. At least to Keith.

Like hell he’d ever admit it, though. 

“Oh, is me not wanting to go not basis enough?” He’d thought his words clever at the start, but that was only because he’d let his eyes shut in a smug expression and he was unable to see the heartbroken look those vicious words elicited. He slowed his last word and lifted his lids when he felt Lance’s hand begin to slip away. His chest felt as though his heart had grown three times its normal size and had stopped beating upon spotting the face now within his line of sight. Like the organ wasn’t even flesh anymore, but instead it was something hot and heavy and metallic. It made him feel sick. 

Lance had been making a fairly weak effort to get his hand back and it wasn’t strong enough to beat Keith’s stone hold. “I assumed,” he wheezed, giving a harsher tug on his hand. The skin over his cheeks and the tips of his ears was warmer in color and Keith was certain, should he reach a finger out and brush it along that fiery skin, it would be just as warm to touch. He couldn’t spare any of the hold on Lance’s wrist though, if the brunet’s insistent pulling on it was any indication. Those eyes, the one he’d been so fond of seeing his reflection in earlier, were downcast and, should they meet his own, he was certain they’d be brewing hotly embarrassed tears. “I’m sorry, was I wrong? I thought you’d still want to.” Keith watched as Lance’s bony shoulders came up around his neck, as though to shield the flushed skin there from further embarrassment.

Keith was hasty to take his words back. “No, I,” he gripped a little bit harder around Lance’s hand as both a way to emphasize and a way to ground himself. “I didn’t mean that.” Lance still had the wrong idea and a half smothered noise clawed its way up his throat. Keith winced, the kind with his nose scrunched and his eyes puddling their own aggravated beginnings of tears, and said, “I, no, I didn’t mean the not wanting to go thing; I did mean it when I first asked you on a date. And I’m still okay with a date.”

There was a loud sniff, then Lance lifted his head again, appearing as though he’d never let his gaze fall to the ground in the first place. “Good, ‘cuz I got up early for you, asshole.” Lance’s hand had reasserted itself over Keith’s and his legs moved with more fervor towards their unnamed destination. The knight in training said nothing in response to the dragging now; he had no desire to slip up like he just had. He didn’t look at where they were going either, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. 

Because over and over on that first date, he’d tried to drag his gaze away from Lance’s glowing skin with no luck. It was once able to drift to Lance’s hair, but his brain fuzzed over and drowned in the waves of those locks and how they looked almost golden in the bright sunlight, how the hairs sticking up gleamed white. After that, his fate had been sealed; he was doomed to trip over his feet due to his inability to shift his line of sight to where it belonged: in front of him. Even as he’d thought of how Lance could, at any second, turn to face him and spot how smitten the look in his eyes was, he’d been unable to turn away. The sight of Lance like this was too addicting to do anything except  _ pray _ Lance didn’t look. 

There was a reason Keith was never too keen on religion and it was revealed when Lance turned to him anyway. 

They’d stopped in front of a decently sized shopping center with cute carts of flowers, foods, and other little trinkets. Keith wasn’t looking at the setup of the area, though, because he’d flung his view to the ground he should have been watching the whole time, feeling embarrassed by how legible he knew his emotions had been on his face and how Lance had clearly been able to catch every last one of them. He was equally flustered by the smile Lance had thrown him upon seeing his staring. It had been small and squinting his already half lidded eyes, as though he’d actually been made happy by Keith’s watchful stare.

He’d dragged him to every booth there. And he’d insisted upon paying for everything that day. He’d told Keith countless times, when the man tugged a coin purse from around his waist, that the day was  _ his _ treat,  _ his _ thank you gift. Each and every time, Keith felt his blood boiling more and more. He’d known that back in Lance’s shop, there were at least three children the brunet was feeding with his shop’s profits alone and he’d known, with the way Lance had sucked in a breath of shaky air before every purchase, he hadn’t had enough money to spare for everything he was buying for Keith. When they passed one of the many food vendors in Castle Town, Keith had, despite not being hungry, let his eyes linger a suspiciously long amount of time on a particular snack. Lance had immediately taken notice and grinned, before reaching for his bag of coins. Keith had been through enough by then.

“For the love of,” he stopped when he noticed people were staring at how harshly he’d raised his voice and the accusatory way he’d angled his finger at Lance. Keith dropped his voice again to eliminate some of the judging gazes. “Quit it! Let me pay for something!” Lance swallowed another mouthful of air at that and his spine straightened in preparation for an argument. His chest had filled with the hot air he’d just swallowed. His eyes spoke his side of the argument for him and Keith relented, just a little. He reached for some sort of middle ground because this date was something he wanted to go right. “How about,” he began, gripping more tightly to the hand he still held in his own. “What if we go on two dates and I pay for the next one?”

Lance had smiled that smile Keith had grown to appreciate at that. “Like a competition? Who can plan the better date?” The brunet had dropped his money and turned to face Keith completely. His hand felt hotter against Keith’s, as though the radiance of his smile had warmed the skin of Keith’s palm. It was burning his cheeks, though, that much was obvious. The taller man gave a stiff nod, already nervous at the prospect of competing with anyone in terms of romance because he was  _ clearly _ at a disadvantage. But it let him pay Lance back and he wanted to see more of that just barely tolerable smile anyway. “Tomorrow, then? I’m going to kick your ass at this!” Keith had no doubts of that. And yet… his cheeks were aching. He couldn’t stop smiling. He could feel how smitten his gaze was. It would have annoyed him to see such a vibrant grin on anyone else, but he wasn’t entirely opposed to the feeling of it across his own cheeks. He felt like he’d already won the competition, yet with less than a day to plan? There was no way this was going to end with his victory.

When he’d gotten home from that first date, he’d been determined to try anyway, though. He’d done everything he could think of to plan the best date in the history of dating. First, he’d gone to Shiro, who had promptly informed him of the fact that he had no money to spend, to which Keith had responded with a scoff. Second—well, there wasn’t really a second, Shiro had been his only hope—he’d drummed his fingers on his thigh because Shiro was right and he  _ didn’t _ have any money. He’d found nothing to help him, so he’d resorted to staying up nearly all night, piecing some plan together, like he was planning a murder instead of a mere outing. 

When morning rolled around, when the sun burned across his shut eyelids, and when Shiro woke him with a smug smile on his face, Keith was exhausted. His eyes couldn’t stop fading out of focus; he’d look at the back of his hand and he’d feel something shift in his pupils, like he was going cross-eyed, and he’d no longer be able to make any of the details of his surroundings out. Something was pounding in his head—a migraine, perhaps—and that made it just as hard to focus. He could hardly remember what he’d spent all night planning. 

He’d wasted a few minutes staring at the dark circles under his eyes that morning. He’d felt self conscious, something he didn’t often feel, and he’d been a fair amount of downtrodden on his walk to Lance’s store as a result. When he had knocked on the brunet’s cutely decorated door—with bright colors around the edges and cartoon sewing tools drawn in the grooves—he’d half expected the man on the other side to wrinkle his nose at the sight of Keith’s tired frame. Lance hadn’t, though. No, he’d seemed eager to open that door—he’d opened it before Keith could even rap his knuckles a second time—and the eagerness didn’t fade at all when he saw Keith. In fact, it grew. His smile went from passive to brilliant, his eyes went from looking cute and droopy with cutely crinkled, old paper at the ends to wide and bright with reflected sunlight. He’d said Keith’s name with such excitement then, too. Like it was the only word that mattered to him at the moment and like it was the only word he could bring to his mind. That was the way Keith always thought of Lance saying his name. 

Lance had looked that same extra bit of attractive on the second date as he had the first date. He’d worn softer, cooler colors to match the clouds rolling in over the horizon and those very same clouds worked wonders with his eyes every time he’d look up at them happily. The sunlight was no longer making the ends of his hair glow, as the clouds had long since drifted over the star, but those chestnut locks still shone with something. Keith wondered if it was just Lance who was glowing. His hand still shook that day and it was visible in the quaking fingertips, even before Keith took them in his own to feel the tremor; the nerves that were present in Lance’s form were pressing a frown onto Keith’s features. No matter how many comfortable smiles Keith made sure to send him, no matter how many comforting squeezes he let wrap his fingers more tightly around Lance’s, that slight waver to the brunet’s hold wouldn’t fade. It made Keith just as nervous as Lance so clearly was.

Keith had taken Lance to a lake that day. It was on the edge of town, just a little ways past where the last large collection of houses was, and next to it was a little shack made of brittle, old oak wood with a sign as cute as Lance’s door hanging off its roof. A boat rental shop. There was a sliding window on its side, but it was closed and covered with blinds on the inside, so Keith couldn’t see what was inside. And that sign on its top gave the hours of all the days of operation and Keith smiled at the way his info on the place had been correct because there, in stark, ruby lettering, was a short sentence.  _ Closed on weekends. _ It was Sunday. While planning the night before, Keith had vaguely remembered Shiro, no more than a month prior, complaining about how he’d brought his husband for a date here on a Saturday and how bummed he’d been when he’d learned the place was closed on weekends. Luckily, that was the opposite of a problem for Keith, the penniless man from an entirely different kingdom, who wasn’t opposed to a little bending of the law. 

Letting go of Lance’s hand, he crept towards the creaking, splitting door, which was swinging back and forth between half and three-quarters open. Lance, having read the very same sign Keith had just grinned devilishly at, squawked indignantly. “Keith, what the  _ hell _ are you doing?” His feet moved quickly to follow the man and drag him back from that slightly ajar door, but Keith twisted his wrist away when the brunet tried to grab it. He made another prideless noise. “Keith, you can’t just  _ do  _ that!” But Keith had already slipped into the gap between the door and its doorframe and Lance wasn’t following. He moved through the insides of the shop, looking for a boat that would fit both him and Lance without much difficulty. After finding one, he moved to the window that lead outside and yanked the blinds away quickly enough to send his date stumbling backwards and onto his ass in surprise. The blast of light had Keith flinching a little, too.

When Lance stood up again, Keith slid the glass door of the window open and asked, “I heard you need a boat?” The brunet scoffed as Keith turned back around to scoop up the boat he’d chosen, yanking it into both arms and heaving it onto the counter Lance stood on the other side of. His cheeks were flushed with exertion, he could feel as much, but Lance’s were flushed with something else entirely. Keith’s lips curled into a smirk and he leaned his elbows on the curve of the underside of the boat he’d just put down. Lance seemed like someone who enjoyed being flirted with and Keith was very adamant on winning this date competition. He figured a little flirting wouldn’t hurt his cause. “Like what you see?” Keith watched the air get caught in Lance’s throat as he choked on it and spat it up with even more crimson dusting his ears and cheeks. He brought his palm to Keith’s forehead and shoved him back.

“Who  _ are _ you? Not Keith!” Keith let himself stumble backwards from the force of Lance’s nudge and he laughed as he took a heavy step to balance himself. The brunet, who was still blushing and shrugging his shoulders up around his ears to hide it, managed to tug the boat down to his side of the counter. Keith hopped on the splintering wood himself afterwards, so his back faced Lance, then he spun around. He was significantly higher than Lance like this. He could see the crown of his hair and how it carried a dull shine in the clouded light and how his scalp peaked through in a zigzag pattern where the brunet had haphazardly parted the locks. How his vibrantly blue eyes trailed up to meet Keith’s above him and how they squinted in a nervous smile at how long Keith had been silent. How his teeth were just barely visible through that nervous, but clearly sincere, grin. Keith felt the urge to shoot a smile back. With a huff, he let himself slip onto the dirt in front of Lance. His chest brushed against Lance’s and he felt the urge to kiss his hairline, but he forced it back down on a swallow, turning instead to the counter he’d just hopped off of.

He shut the window to the shop they’d just stolen from, before tugging one end of the boat into his hands. Lance caught the other in a firm grip and helped Keith take it to the water. “So far my date is still better,” he quipped, which received a reaction of Keith nudging the boat into the brunet’s gut. It seemed to wedge a deep laugh from his stomach, like it had been there all along and Keith had just pushed it out. The sound made his heart churn. “Abuse? Not winning yourself any ‘good date’ points here, Mullet.” They’d reached the water’s edge and Keith dropped his end of the boat harshly—as though wordlessly arguing with Lance’s accusation—into the waves and watched them grow as he did. Lance spun the wooden object and did the same with his end, so his ripples crashed against Keith’s with gentle, rhythmic claps. It was soothing to watch, but Keith stared at Lance instead anyway. There were oars tucked under the seats of the boat and Keith slipped them out. He waved one jerkily about, aiming it first at Lance and then at the inside of the boat to silently order him to step in. Lance raised a slim eyebrow. “Oh, don’t I get a parasol to twirl while we row?”

Keith groaned and his lips curled around a rebuttal, but the light caught on Lance’s smile and his words clung to his throat so tightly, so stickily, that his hopes of speaking were lost. Despite his unnecessarily snarky comment, Lance swung a leg up over the edge of the boat. The other followed. He sat, then looked expectantly into Keith’s eyes until the man completed the same succession of movements. It was then the nerves really started to kick in for Keith.

He wondered if this was truly something people did on dates. He’d heard as much, but he’d heard a lot of untrue things over the years, what if this was just another lie? Even if it was normal, there was no guarantee it was something Lance would enjoy. Keith started to feel nerves bubble in his stomach and it became hard to will himself to push off of the shore. Lance was still watching the clouds, but now he was doing so by watching them in their reflection on the water’s surface. The brunet bent slightly over the back of the boat and dipped a finger into the water, smiling. He swirled it in small figure eights, then let it trail motionlessly through the wakes left when Keith finally started to row farther out. He might have been a knight in training and he might have been one of the most powerful fighters in existence, but somehow the mere act of rowing was sending his pulse to unhealthily high speeds. He let his eyes rake over Lance’s form as he rowed and he saw the rise and fall of his chest, the inkling of some soft look in his eyes, and the way he looked with the murky sunlight filtering through his lashes when he lifted his gaze from the water and back to Keith. No, no, the rowing had his heart rate just fine, after all. It was the adorable abomination in the boat with him that was to be blamed for his breathlessness. 

As they left the shore, Keith let his thoughts and gaze wander. He looked about the cerulean water and the elegant stems of plants around the edge of the lake. The browns of the cattail plants matched the color of Lance’s hair and Keith tried to keep his stare from traveling back to the brunet across from him in the boat. The tall grass, slender and yellowing at their bases with roots winding into the freshwater and forming a forest of knots around the outside of the lake, reminded him of the way Lance had looked the one time Keith had seen him still in pajamas. Those roots were just as knotted and tangled as the ends of Lance’s hair that morning, though Keith very strongly doubted they were anywhere near as cared for and soft. He wondered when everything started to remind him of this guy he wasn’t even technically dating, when someone like Lance began to matter so much to him. His eyes caught on a flower on the edge of the water, like his gaze was a loose loop of thread in a shirt and it had snagged on the flower, so all of his attention tugged to it. It was a faded, browning, oversaturated pink, but the color looked so much like the tips of Lance’s blushing ears, he couldn’t think the plant as ugly as it arguably should have been. Its five petals were a darker brown at the center and they spun into some cleaner, redder shade at the tips. Its stem was dark, but too thin to identify the color, especially with how far Keith and Lance now were from the shore. And that reminded him once again of where they were and what they should have been doing. A date. Right.

They reached the center of the lake and as Keith tucked the oars back into their nook under the seats of the boat, the other man there turned from the water he’d been dipping his fingers into. Keith’s words were lumps in his throat and his thoughts were a mere rhythm of tapping in his fingertips as they compelled him to repeat the fretful pattern of clacking fingernails on the splitting wood of his seat. He wanted to start a conversation, to hold Lance’s hand, to  _ something, _ but those desires were all clogged somewhere inside, holed up by his rising anxiety. Lance reached his own hand out, sympathy ringing in his breaths as he sighed the preface to undoubtedly reassuring words. The corners of his lips rose, Keith’s did the same, and then those cute, smiling, slender lips parted to speak and Keith felt his breath hitch further, his heart thrum harder, all in anticipation of what words would tumble past those wonderful, kissable lips-- with a blush, his line of sight yanked away from them and focused on Lance’s eyes. That really wasn’t much better, though, with how they still reflected the greys of the clouds above and how they seemed fogged over both with that gloomy shade and with thought. Thought that was being strung into words.

“Hey, you know, I was just teasing. You’re doing fine,” he said, and it was so quiet, so gentle, and so unlike the noisy, childish tone Lance usually spoke in, Keith swore it was just the murmur of the waves brushing the sides of their boat. He felt his nose stuff and the natural water in his eyes began to feel thicker. This was  _ his _ date; Lance had  _ no right _ to be the romantic one. There was another intake of breath, still soft and starkly un-Lance, and once again, Keith was certain it had come from something else. Something flying past his ear, like a bird, perhaps. Then a different noise, one that was obviously and truly not the man across from him; it was  _ actually _ the water this time. And then another just like it, a drip, followed by pittering and pattering against the old wood of his boat. Keith watched the color of the wood, the wood that had previously been not too much darker than Lance’s skin, turn closer to the shade of his date’s hair. In small, damp circles. It was then that the inhalation Keith had heard earlier came back out in short, stuttering noises.

He looked to Lance, panic flooding his senses, worried the incoming rain had completely botched his date. He’d turned, entirely expecting that cute man to be frustrated with the water in his hair, since Keith could feel himself hastily becoming angry with the dampness in his own, but that wasn’t what he’d seen at all. He hadn’t seen hands flocking to the top of Lance’s head to protect it from the downpour—which the drizzle was very hastily becoming—and he certainly hadn’t seen a frown or a wrinkled nose. He’d expected to see something distraught, but that wasn’t what he saw. Not even slightly.

A nose, which had always been a little turned towards the sky in a pleasant curve, was now angled directly at the clouds and at the streamers of water falling from them. Rain looked more like dewdrops or clear freckles on that tanned skin. His hair began to cling to his forehead and Keith heard him laugh again because that stuttering before had been a laugh as well. His tongue scooped a couple of the raindrops off of his lips. Keith watched the splotches of dark on Lance’s shirt spread into whole shapes as the rain fell from the ends of his hair and wet more of the fabric. His attention was dragged back up to those wet eyelashes, those even more blue eyes, when Lance called his name. The sound of it, the sound of it from _his_ lips, circled around Keith and rang in his brain, as though that one sound was a ripple of water in the lake they were on and he was nothing more than a single raindrop. That utterance surrounded him over and over, just like those ripples. It made him feel almost small in comparison, but he still felt so important because had he, the raindrop, never existed, such a beautiful coo of his name, such a stunning wavelet, never would have existed either. Lance hummed his name again. 

“You win,” he said. “Pretty scenery in the rain? Yeah, your date was better.” Keith couldn’t help but wonder if Lance knew that he was the most beautiful bit of scenery there. That effortless smile Keith had grown to appreciate… he had to know, right? Keith tucked a bit of his soaked hair behind his ear, but some still clung to his cheeks, raven and so strongly different than his pale skin. His hand then went to Lance’s lighter hair; it was soft, but it left lukewarm water on Keith’s palm. He brought their noses together, but it was ultimately Lance who tugged them the rest of the way together. Keith could taste the rain seeping through the part of his chapped lips and he could taste a little bit of Lance there, too. It was hard to describe and he didn’t have much time to study it, before Lance pulled back to reveal his thoughts had been much the same as Keith’s. “I guess anywhere with you would be pretty scenery, though, huh?” His eyes seemed to get brighter. “Eh, hotshot?”

Keith gave no acknowledgement to the nickname or the rhetorical question. Instead he slipped one hand down to Lance’s shoulder and lifted the other from his side to cup the back of that soft, wet neck. He clenched his eyes shut and landed a firmer kiss against those rainy lips—a kiss both stiff and inexperienced—and his heart swelled at the pleased hum he got from Lance. When he pulled back, before Lance had even opened his eyes, he posed his own question. “Does that make you my boyfriend?” A laugh and another one of those far-more-than-just-bearable smiles. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it does.”

After that, it hadn’t taken Keith long to realize something. During the many months he’d known Lance, he’d grown to like, just barely, that dopey smile. But in the months following that second date, he learned  _ like _ wasn’t the word anymore. When Lance would tone it down for him every now and then, he’d know that wasn’t the word. His boyfriend would see Keith’s eyes start to dart and he’d feel his palm get sweaty, and he’d piece together he’d crossed some line. That he’d been too excitable. And then he’d get a mellowed look in his eyes and he’d lower his voice, dipping it so it wasn’t as booming and overwhelming. He’d take a step back and give Keith time to breathe. And every time he’d do that, lower the wattage of his smile, Keith found himself feeling the brightness Lance had lost being passed over to him. And it had never made sense. 

He liked that smile. Why would it make him happy to see it fade? Why did Lance toning himself down make his stomach churn and flutter? Why would Lance doing something so simple for him make his cheeks stretch to the same curling shape Lance had just dropped his lips from? Why did it make him happy when Lance’s smile grew again to match? It hadn’t made sense.

Until it had.

Until the day Keith realized everything, the day he’d figured it all out. It wasn’t a big day; he hadn’t done anything special. He’d seen Lance smile at something, not an uncommon occurrence, and it brought a word to his mind. That gleeful bubbling in his stomach had finally grown a word that day. So had the ache in his heart and the knot in his throat. The way his chest got warm every time that beautiful man sent a grin his way. It all made sense because it meant he cared. Lance  _ cared.  _ About  _ Keith.  _ And Keith cared, too. About that smile and the man behind it. He cared so damn much about both and when that clicked in his head, he realized what the right word for how he felt about those things was.

He hadn’t grown to simply  _ like _ that smile. No, that wasn’t the word.

He’d grown to love it. 

That had been the day he realized he loved Lance and he hadn’t doubted it,  _ not once, _ since. As he watched that very same man bury that smile he loved into his pillow so he could release excited squeals about seeing his family, he felt that love bubble all over again. His heart felt overwhelmed—the love so bright and so hot and so very pleasant, he felt seconds from going into cardiac arrest—and he couldn’t help smiling the exact effortless type of smile he grew up hating. Gods, he was so unbearably happy to have married that man. He tapped Lance’s shoulder and the brunet turned his head to look at him. His eyes sparkled like they had on that second date. Keith dipped his head so he could kiss him like then, too. He felt the brunet’s smile widen and all the worries of Lotor faded away. In that moment, Keith knew they’d make it through this. 

Keith would find Lotor, he’d hunt the attackers down, he’d do anything to make certain of it.

Because he loved that smile and he’d personally damn anyone who tried to stuff it away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought!!


	3. Betrayal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhhh I'm so so sorry this took so long ;-; I'm super sick rn, like, 100 degree fever, even while on medicine :(   
> so, I went to bed early instead of editing and I actually drank water for once????? wack  
> Anyway! I hope you enjoy this update >:0

Lance ended up falling asleep easily. He’d passed out completely and fallen into a sleep that was so deep, he was entirely disoriented when he woke up. Dizzy. Keith had stirred him awake and Lance could make out the fact that his husband was already fully dressed in his armor through the watery haze in his eyes. The metal of his chest plate was frigid when Lance reached a sleepy hand out to trace it. He counted the dips there, still so tired his dreams played in his head, and he felt each and every scratch on the formerly pristine metal. Keith said something muffled by the sleep still fogging the forefront of Lance’s mind and he tugged Lance upright and out of bed. The brunet followed the movement without much thought. 

He really hated being half awake like this. He hated stumbling over his feet tiredly and needing to press a palm to the wallpaper to steady himself; it almost made him feel queasy. Making his way to the bathroom, he could feel his husband watching his groggy movements with concern. Understandable, because he was sure his sleep deprivation was written all over his face. His eyelids almost felt like someone had stuck gum between them, since they just couldn’t seem to pull apart. His hip slammed into the corner of the bathroom counter on his way in, as a result. His stomach was still rolling and he pondered over whether or not he might have just been hungry. Or the attack from the night before and those damned words had yet to truly fall under his waves of excitement at the plan to visit his family. Either way, that sick feeling failed to dissipate, despite every one of his attempts. It didn’t go away when he willed it to and it didn’t go away as he shampooed his hair or scrubbed his back, either. Quite a few times during his bath, he felt drowsiness claw at his mind and tug his eyes shut as his senses were lost to a tangent of whatever thought he’d been having before he started to pass out. And then, usually, there’d be a thud of Keith’s armor in the bedroom outside and he’d wake back up with a start. 

He reminded himself that it would all be over soon, since they had a lead. The start of something. A potential solution. A first step. It had to be enough.

That reassurance did little to wake him up, but it did shrink the illness swarming his gut a small amount and when he started to get dressed in his day clothes—his own leather armor which Keith had left so kindly for him on the bathroom counter—his eyes began to droop again. By the time he actually made it back to the bedroom, Keith had thrown himself across the bed, armor still on, to watch the ceiling. Lance was tempted to curl up next to him and fall back asleep. He’d been unable to get a good night’s rest for  _ so long; _ he was desperate for it at every turn. He had always fallen asleep easily, but it was so much easier now, with his nightmare induced insomnia nipping at the undersides of his eyes and leaving dark, purple marks behind. 

It was still no later than seven in the morning; they could afford a few minutes of nap time, right? Lance inched towards the bed and his husband sprawled across it, making it close enough to run a hand along his unarmored stomach before Keith noticed. He smiled. Lance smiled back because, thank every god he knew, Keith’s smile was brilliant. His eyebrows were dark and sharp and drawn together in a sleepy sort of furrow. His hair was strewn about him like a backdrop to his pale skin and his dark eyes looked far from dark with all the sunlight pooling and reflecting on their surfaces. Keith’s slender nose looked pink and his ivory cheeks went rosy when they wrinkled into a smile. Lance resisted his desire to kiss every inch of skin he could see. 

Keith got up and his hair fell over his shoulders. He tugged it into a sloppy ponytail, before starting to head out of the room. The brunet followed his lead, disappointed by the lack of a nap, and turned his gaze downward to watch the plush carpet of royal blue they were padding across. He counted each wide dent Keith’s armor left where he stepped and landed his weight. The hallway wasn’t much to marvel at and it didn’t spark much emotion in him, but when they made it outside and passed over the moat, Lance felt something stir in his stomach. Keith was walking a few paces ahead of him,  _ away _ from him, and Lance could remember the last time he’d seen Keith walking away over the drawbridge like that. He felt sick. His stomach was aching and it felt like its contents were boiling and sending steam into his anxious chest. When Keith had last walked away from Lance like this and over this bridge, he had been going after the last attackers of Castle Town. Haggar and-- the name  _ Lotor _ echoed in his mind for only a moment; only the sound of a rolling tongue as the L rang out, before he was jogging to catch up with Keith’s long strides. He gripped his husband’s paler hand with a kind of desperation he was certain Keith could identify. 

The rest of the team was there to see them off. Allura had a few bags of supplies and a few blood samples to pass over to them. Everyone else just had simple, short, sweet farewells and wishes of luck. Lance hadn’t been on a mission like this since he’d been certified because, really, the certification was nothing more than a formality and Allura didn’t pull rank and order him around too often. She’d stopped sending Keith on missions over the last six months, too, and Lance couldn’t help but wonder if it was his fault. If maybe it was his lingering anxiety that had made his husband’s duties diminish. He looked to Keith, as though the silent way he was accepting supplies would provide an answer, but no such answer came. Lance decided to stop dwelling on it because, either way, they were both on a mission now and that was something to be happy about. They were together.  _ Focus on the positive. _

Lance had found himself constantly frustrated by his own anxiety lately. That swelling ache in his stomach when he was trying to fall asleep, in a dark room, every night. It was infuriating. Every time he thought he’d get a decent rest, a solid eight hours, he’d shut his eyes and there, on the insides of his eyelids, would be Lotor, the threat that was still very possibly alive. Even when he managed to avoid it against his closed eyes, the prince would pop into his dreams anyway. Lotor hadn’t just marked the narrow line along his throat; he marked his eyes with streaks of bloodshot red and underneath them with crescents of dark purple and black. 

_ Focus on the positive. _

It was a method he’d been reminding himself of, but hardly one that worked. He focused on how not knowing where Lotor was meant he wasn’t  _ there,  _ that he wasn’t within range of hurting Lance. He focused on how he had his husband to help him now, should the Galra prince return. He focused on how it was very possible Lotor had been dead all along and that the attack on the castle could have been nothing more than an attempt at avenging his death. But none of it did anything. He could feel his pulse in his fingertips now and he tightened them around Keith’s. The knight turned to him at the sensation, temporarily ignoring the orders Allura was giving to shoot Lance a briefly concerned look. 

A smile, a pair of furrowed brows, and a squeeze back around Lance’s hand. Maybe his focusing on the positive method didn’t work, but as they accepted their final order from the queen and started off in the direction of Lance’s home village, Lance was certain those gentle, concerned looks were enough. Keith was enough to quell his anxiety. He shot an exaggeratedly gleeful wave back at the group, but let the facade drop the moment he was sure they wouldn’t see. Keith would have been able to see through the falsified happiness anyway. 

Lance had missed the warnings and instructions the queen had given between her farewells, so Keith explained them again. His ears had been ringing with that fear Keith had barely managed to diminish. When he had to repeat Allura’s words, the head knight didn’t complain about it. There was an unspoken understanding between the husbands that had developed since Lance’s capture. About what to do when the brunet’s swimming in panic became too much for him to focus through. So Keith had no quarrels with reiterating the warnings; he knew why Lance had been spacing out. His first duplicate warning was about the forest they were approaching. There wasn’t anything particularly dangerous about it and they shouldn’t have expected any trouble making it through the whole thing before nightfall. One thing they didn’t have to worry about. After that, he told Lance about a river they would have to cross and, after  _ that, _ he explained how the rest would pretty much be a straight shot through a couple miles of desert. When Lance had first moved to Castle Town, he’d gone this same route—though in the opposite direction—so he knew fairly well what he was up against. Nothing he couldn’t handle. Surely nothing Keith would be unable to handle, either. That made his shoulders slump as the stress leaked out and relaxed his muscles. Lastly, Keith gave him a lead Allura had mentioned earlier. On the necks of all the soldiers controlled the previous night, there’d been a single would. Barely noticeable. The size of a prick of a needle, at best. That bit of information was hardly a game changer, since Lance didn’t know anything about spells having to do with needles, but it could become one if Lance’s family knew more than he did. 

Every bit of new knowledge made him feel more at ease, if nothing else. 

His skin didn’t feel clammy with stress anymore and he was finally able to fully appreciate the scenery. The way the trees around him had white and pink flowers sprouting between the bright shades of green and how the clear, blue sky glowed in the cracks and splits between branches, too. Lance looked at Keith and how the colors went with his skin perfectly; the small ovals of leafy shadows dotted his face so all his flesh was dappled grey and indigo blue. His pale skin twinkled through the shade of the trees in a way that made the patches of his milk complexion look like stars. There were streaks of sunlight glinting across his armor, drawing lines of gold back up at the sky and painting stripes on the branches over their heads. The ink of his hair looked darker and softer, the jet black of the tufts of fur on a kitten’s stomach. Lance stared at it all, entirely unashamed and too drunk off the sights around him to so much as  _ think _ to be ashamed. Shame wasn’t a word within the range of his vocabulary as he observed the splendor he’d been lucky enough to marry.  

That man, as though he’d been alerted to Lance’s staring, shifted from his proud stance to something more relaxed as he turned his gaze from in front of him to the brunet at his side. Hung shoulders, spine bent under the weight of that metal armor, a pose that let the ends of his hair follow the caresses of the faint breeze. Lance gave a smile at the sudden and soft attention, a smile stretched thin into the shape of the word  _ sheepish. _ His nose dipped to face the grass under his boot clad toes and his fingers jittered to behind his ear—a tucking motion he didn’t have the hair to complete. Nor had he ever. Just how much had he lost his head while staring at Keith? His hand tumbled back to its swinging place by his side and his eyes fluttered back to the dark expanse of forest ahead of him. Those swaying fingertips met another collection like them, linking together immediately. 

And they stayed like that for quite a while, buttery in Lance’s hold, soft like he knew Keith’s hair would be. It was at least half an hour before Lance let those fingers slip from his own as he trotted a little ways ahead. Just enough ahead to pull a low hanging branch out of the path. Just enough to get Keith to trust him to keep it up, curved against the weight of its natural shape; to hold the push of it against his palm. Ever the trickster, Lance let it slip from his grasp as soon as Keith was within its line of travel. The sharp slap of it against the man’s uncovered stomach was matched by a sharp, surprised, outward shove of breath. Almost a wheeze. 

“Abuse,” Keith muttered, rubbing the hardly injured patch of fabric over his hardly injured belly. The brunet, the  _ abuser, _ simply laughed a laugh he only laughed when he got to misuse his husband privileges. To exploit the benefits of being the one person in the world who could say what he wanted to the head knight without fearing for a hiss of a reply, a snarl, or anything other than a putty grin. The head knight never seemed deeply bothered by the teasing and he almost,  _ almost, _ seemed to get a kick of joy out of seeing Lance laugh like that. It was something Lance had always noticed, a flicker of warmth in Keith’s eyes whenever he pretended to truly be annoyed by Lance’s teasing. It was there this time, too, and Lance shrugged it off, as well as the warmth it brought to his own stomach. Perhaps, with that lovesick expression, Lance’s husband hit back in his own way. Bastard. 

He always did that. One way or another, he managed to get under Lance’s skin as much as the brunet got under his and maybe, though the brunet would sooner die than admit it aloud, his hits back were the whole reason Lance teased him at all. They were never something he didn’t like. It was like a prize, watching the strict facade of his husband crumble like an overcooked pastry under his ceaseless joshing. It would collapse into a shy grin sometimes, feigned annoyance other times, and it would occasionally be bolder, more smug, as Keith  _ intentionally _ struck his own mocking blow. Lance’s favorite case of that had been a few months back, not too long after the anti-magic law had been repealed. 

The ex-witch had been teaching his husband a bit of magic, just a few healing spells for emergencies, when the knight suggested he teach the rest of the Altean knights the same basics. That opportunity was immediately pounced upon by Lance who was always eager to accept any time with his husband. The brunet smiled, too, because he knew Keith was exactly the same in that regard. Under the ruse of helping the army, Keith had just barely been unable to completely stow away his real intentions. He could have asked any healer, including those already employed full-time by the crown, to teach his knights because, no matter how he sliced it, Lance was nowhere near the best at healing. And yet, had Keith asked anyone else? Had he even  _ considered _ asking anyone else? Not for a moment. This was clearly, even to the dense husband of the head knight, merely a poorly veiled “bring your husband to work” day. But was he going to point that out? Absolutely not. Better not to chance ruining this opportunity. Because, after all, only one thing could ever be better in the teasing department than teasing his husband: teasing him in front of his colleagues. There was something extra sweet about seeing Keith try to stifle his reactions to save face and the ways he did it—faces were stuffed in crooks of elbows, jaws were clenched, fingers tended to drum or clench together—were just as endearing. 

So, obviously, Lance had gotten right on preparing a chance to tease him around his coworkers. When Keith had gone to work the next day, he’d asked the queen’s permission to teach his knights, or rather to have Lance teach his knights, healing spells. He’d gotten a date for the event, set at about a week after when he’d first proposed the idea to Lance. Under the time strain, the brunet had to work extra hard to be done in time; planning it, executing that plan, and relishing it all took their own amount of time and he was irresponsible with his other duties to be certain to give them that amount. People would come into his shop, asking for an outfit, and Lance would tell them it would take at least a week, even if it was something simple he could knock out in an hour. Teasing Keith had been solidly at the top of his list of priorities. Hunk and Pidge invited him to hang out, but he waved them off. He was hunched over his desk, plotting and sewing together just what he knew would be the perfect torture for his sweet, loving, undeserving husband. 

He’d sewn shorts. Short ones. Edged with lace and trailed with the same loops and delicate embroidery Lance had first employed in Keith’s scarf a few years back, though this time they spelled no particular words or phrases. Gentle twirls like they were the skirts of dancing, spinning, elegant ballerinas. To be honest, despite being married to Keith for years, he still didn’t know if the knight was more an ass or a leg man, but he was perfectly alright with providing a view to both. He’d taken the smallest measurements he possibly could for his shirt, too. Tightly fit chest, slim around the waist and hips, collar dipping low. Though, as he’d planned the last bit, tracing a gentle finger along the scar he had over his Adam’s apple, he’d reconsidered it. A choker would be enough for that, he’d ultimately decided. 

The morning of the event, when snow was still dusted over the top of the couple’s roof and blowing a cloud of cold into their bedroom, Lance had told his husband he’d meet him at the castle, informed him he should leave first. If he’d put on the outfit any sooner than the head knight left, after all, he would have, without a doubt, been forced to wear something more appropriate. Keith probably would have been right to make him, too, if the shudder that passed Lance’s form when he stepped out onto the street was any indication. It was winter. Dead winter. Snow, cold breezes, icy streetways—none of them went particularly well with the bare state of his thighs or the open dip of his collarbones. When he ran back in to grab a sort of trench coat, both to stave off the judgemental—though knowing—looks and to smother away the cold, he felt a little like a hooker, since his naked calves stuck out from under the fabric. Oh well. He’d figured, if nothing else, it would ease his goal of embarrassing Keith. 

He’d made his way to the castle at a leisurely pace and even when he’d gotten there, he took his sweet time passing through the doorway to where all the royal knights had been gathered. Keith was standing, shoulders slack and eyes patient and observant, at the front of the large, featureless room. Though his eyes were watchful, they landed not on Lance, but rather the sparring of his soldiers. The brunet watched them for a moment, as well, then he let his eyes slip shut to just listen to the sound of it all. With a palm pressed to the doorway he was still in the middle of, he merely let the clashes of metal swords and the heaving breaths of exerted soldiers swarm his ears. It was soothing—cathartic, almost. The clang of two metal objects hitting and sliding against each other sounded a lot like how Keith did when he wore his armor. When he took hefty steps and looked and sounded even stronger than he did without. The sound of that felt  _ safe. _ And when Lance sighed, he almost forgot his goal, as the breath back in was tainted with a borderline nostalgic smell of rust with a root in his memories he couldn’t pinpoint.  

“Oh, Lance.” His eyes flickered quickly open, so much so, he swore he could feel his pupils widening and shrinking at the influx of brightness. “You’re here.” Keith’s nose was a little wrinkled as he said it, as though he could smell the devious intent seeping through Lance’s skin. Like it wafted out from the bottom of his coat and painted his skin a vibrant, incriminating color as it passed his ankles. Or maybe he was merely questioning his odd choice in outfit. Regardless of the reason the look had appeared, though, it slipped from his face as he crossed the room to invite Lance out from his nook in the threshold. His hand went to the small of Lance’s back, bringing him in front of the collection of soldiers as though Lance was a new student being introduced to a class in a cliche story. “I’m sure, in light of everything that’s happened with the anti-magic law, you all know my husband,” the head knight huffed, ignoring the murmured exclamations of surprise at the prospect of him being married. “So, I want you all to be nice to him.” His eyes swept the room, like he truly was the teacher to an army of toddlers. “Or else.” The threat was monotonous and lacking aggression, but Lance was certain it was nothing short of the truth. 

His husband turned to him, gaze giving a silent instruction to start his lesson. Which Lance had hardly planned. He could always wing it, right? 

“Right.” Lance flashed a smile—outwardly innocent, but the squint of Keith’s eyes in response told him the knight could easily see through the thin skin of the lie in that grin. The brunet brushed his fingertips over the top button of his coat and, as the collar of it fell to expose his choker, the squint in Keith’s eyes became more obvious. After all, a choker was very clearly not the turtlenecks Lance had been wearing lately. The spark in the mage’s grin turned just a tad more devious and he undid the second button. Keith looked as though he was ready to leap forward and quickly cover the brunet’s collarbones with his hands, all the while shoving him back home to force him to put on something less revealing. Somehow, he managed to retain his calm demeanor. Still cheeky, Lance undid the rest of the buttons all without pause and he shucked the jacket off his shoulders immediately after. “Babe, would you mind holding this?” Lance passed the garment over to his husband, licking his lips at the way the knight fumbled with the lump of fabric as his eyes all but bugged out of his head. There was a hiss boiling in the back of Keith’s throat, Lance was sure, but he was unfortunately able to stifle it. “Right, so, I’ve been teaching Keith a bit,” he turned his focus back to the other knights, all of whom seemed relatively unphased by his antics. “I don’t think any of you will have issues picking it up, too.”

Lance would casually go through the details of basic healing—and some attack—spells, using the official terminology and explaining it as only someone who grew up around magic would. Then Keith would stutter through a layman’s translation, eyes trained on the tightness of Lance’s shirt, instead of the spell in his palms, every time. Without fail. His cheeks were a shade of crimson; Lance was fully prepared to watch him pass out. Lance bet Keith would pay money to be sitting along the floor, like the rest of the soldiers, for the sole purpose of not falling when he fainted. 

Shiro was in the class somewhere and, having caught on to Lance’s tactic to embarrass Keith, played his own role in the proceedings. His husband was a mage; he knew damn well how to cast the basic spells Lance was teaching. Still, he raised a relaxed hand and waved Lance over. “Can you help me with this one?” The spell was bright in his other hand, just how it was supposed to be, a flawless specimen of just how the magic looked when Lance did it. Still, the mage paced towards him, regardless. When he got close enough, he kneeled in front of Shiro so his palms were to his thighs and he was squatting. “No, you gotta do the stereotypical teacher lean,” he suggested, quietly enough that Keith wouldn’t hear from across the room. “With your butt out. That’ll probably make Keith suffocate.” Lance grinned; Shiro was a blessing. He did as he was told, straightening his legs, keeping his palms against his thighs, but being sure his backside, and the hardly-present shorts atop it, were out in the open for his husband to see. There was a choking noise behind him, where Keith was surely obviously gawking, and the sound was followed by hushed laughter from all the other soldiers. Lance brought a palm to his mouth to stuff back his own mirth and Shiro was biting his lip to do the same. Keith was the only one not having fun in this game. 

“Hey, Keith,” one of the other knights asked, his voice just a little too fake to be proposing a genuine inquiry. Lance straightened his spine and stood normally again, turning to face the speaking man. Keith took a little longer to do the same, eyes lingering on the tightness of Lance’s shirt and trailing down to the sliver of stomach that had exposed itself when Lance had stood himself up again. His gaze remained there for a solid five seconds after he angled his head at the talking soldier. Eyebrows still sunk low in a sort of scowling ogle, Keith paced to meet his soldier and only let his eyes leave Lance when he got there. The whole of his face was dusted—no, more like buried in—red. The tips of his ears and the peak of his nose. The swells of his cheeks and not even the slope of his neck were spared flushing fiery. “Hey, do you need a minute, sir?” The words strung together in the question were polite, but the tone with which they were spoken was smug. Keith shook his head solidly and his eyes clung to Lance again as his face turned in that direction. His eyes read mariticide. Lance made sure, as Keith’s eyes flashed up to his face, to sweep his tongue slowly along his bottom lip. Keith swung his head back forward immediately.

“No, I do not.” He clenched a fist at his side, bunching the fabric of his pants up. “Did you need something, Griffin?” Lance made his way over, too, and placed himself in front of his husband once he got there. Keith felt warmer than usual and his muscles stuttered in their normally smooth motion to rest around the small of his waist. His arms looped loosely around the spot, but his hands went to latch to the ends of his shirt and tugged it down. His actions were indicative of a desire to remain chaste, yet when his hands stopped that first motion, they began another, likely unintentional, movement. His fingers brushed circles into the tight fabric over Lance’s taut stomach, gently, like waves licking the edge of a shore. The brunet felt the skin of Keith’s chest get hotter behind his spine. 

“Oh, I just wanted to check up on you,” Griffin said, sweeping a hand through his hair quickly. “You sure you don’t need a minute? You look pretty flushed; maybe you’re sick.” Lance could hear Keith’s teeth grind behind him. The caress of his stomach stopped and there was a grumble from the chest against his shoulder blades. There was a hiss of Griffin’s name, too—a warning that went unheeded—and the knight under Keith’s command still kept his eyebrows quirked at a smug angle. “Maybe you both need a minute.  _ Together.  _ You know, to—“

“That’s enough!” Keith had snapped and Lance’s cheeks had puffed as he tried to silence his resulting laugh, but when his husband started to drag him away and gave him the same tone he’d given Griffin, the laughter ebbed away. “A word, Lance,” he huffed. And when he nudged Lance back outside the training room and shut the door behind them both, the word was revealed to be a lot more than just one. “What the hell, Lance?!” The brunet’s cheeks swelled out with another trapped laugh, but the air was shoved past his lips when Keith pressed him back against the door. “You’re an absolute  _ menace, _ Lance! This is,” the head knight clenched his fists on either side of Lance’s shoulders and ducked his burning face.

“This is why we can’t have nice things,” Lance suggested, the end of his statement rising in a question, despite him knowing perfectly well it wasn’t the completion of Keith’s unfinished sentence. 

“Yes.” A blink. “No! No, that’s not what I was going to say. I—you!” He screamed a muted, frazzled noise from inside a closed mouth, before swinging that mouth down to meet Lance’s. The door behind the brunet rattled from the force of it and his hands lifted quickly to meet the nape of Keith’s neck. He reciprocated the racing kisses, arching his back to press closer to Keith and when the knight let his fists unclench and flattened his palms against the wall, it was only a matter of time before those palms were on him. They gripped first at the shirt over Lance’s shoulder blades, brushing and tugging at the fitted fabric, then they slipped down to trace a single finger along the divots of Lance’s spine. Up, down, slow, steady; the simple motion had Lance forcing a shattered noise into the open mouth against his own. The hands dipped lower still, cupping his behind and the shorts over them, and he pulled back from Keith’s kisses to give him a scolding look. 

“Hey, hey!” Keith’s half lidded eyes blinked slowly at the exclamation and his hands gave a squeeze. Lance yelped. “There might be people around, hey!” Keith slid his hands into the brunet’s back pockets and rubbed circles with his thumbs. “Hey,” the word dragged out when Keith tucked his head over Lance’s shoulder and brought a tongue out to lick at that one spot behind his jaw and below his ear. A kiss there, one lower, one farther forward, then the drag of teeth that had Lance swaying and left his legs entirely useless at holding himself up. Luckily, Keith’s chest kept him upright. 

“Did you really think you’re the only one who knows how to tease, babe?” Keith took his left hand from Lance’s pocket and slipped it up under the back of his shirt. It slid to Lance’s waist and dragged nails lightly over the ridges of the brunet’s ribs. His voice had been so silky and it rumbled tangibly against Lance’s throat. The brunet’s mind fogged over and he didn’t resist when Keith lifted him from his chest and cornered him back against the door. His right hand finally left Lance’s pocket as he did, but it slipped up to trace his bottom lip. The knight tucked the thumb into his mouth, just enough to pull the lip back and let it go, to pop back against Lance’s teeth. “Heh, now who’s all red, huh?” He was right; Lance could feel his cheeks practically melting and his ears felt like they’d combust with how much he was flushing. “Though maybe,” the head knight swung his head forward to press wet, open mouth kisses back against what was uncovered of Lance’s neck. The brunet panted, but said nothing. “Maybe you’d rather be purple.” His teeth came lightly into the kisses, too, and before he could follow through on that promise of bruising and marking, Lance relented. 

“Okay! Okay! You win! What do you want? I’ll put on my jacket again, just ease up!” The brunet turned his head to the side. “Geez, you usually wait until we’re home to get back at me. What gives?” He managed a wink through his blush. It was hard; he felt so hot his eyes were watering. 

“Hm. Dunno. Just wanted you to understand what I’m going through. Don’t think you’ve evaded payback later, though.” There was another swipe of a tongue against Lance’s neck. Lance had laughed and shoved him back because, deny it he might try, but he truly did love it when Keith got back at him. His reactions to Lance’s teasing won a solid first place in the competition of what he enjoyed, but his rebuttals were up there, too. But… 

Ah, right, the payback. In the present, in the forest, Keith had yet to give any form of that, so the brunet egged him on. “You just need faster reflexes, babe!” Lance began to walk backwards so he could face his husband and his hands flitted to cup the knight’s cheekbones. His fingers reached next out to grip Keith’s temples and the hairline just a little further. He pressed their foreheads together. The man rose an inquisitorial eyebrow and his lips curled further. That look, those soft eyes that clung to nothing but the depths of his own, they both had Lance flashing a lovesick smile. His heart ached with a sweltering kind of affection, the kind that made his eyes burn with gentle drips of tears he dare not let fall. He was grinning so hard his cheeks burned the same loving fire his eyes were echoing. The same smile was parting Keith’s lips and baring his teeth fiercely, but only with adoration. “I love you,” he sang, pecking Keith’s smiling lips and the teeth behind.

“I love you, too.”

Lance turned back around and walked at the same pace as Keith for a minute or two. He did so with a smile so large, it was basically a split in the earth’s crust. His cheeks ached and he figured those few minutes of grinning alone would give him crow’s feet. But, as he turned to watch his husband’s pensive, unphased, pleasantly easy expression, he figured it was worth it. He noted how his husband’s face scrunched when he swatted something off his neck. The thought of how odd that was—there weren’t any mosquitos around, as far as he’d noticed—was swatted away much the same way. Keith made a muted exclamation of a sting from whatever he’d batted off and it reminded Lance of the reactions he’d get from his teasing game. Getting back on that, he jumped ahead again and pulled the same stunt as before, yanking a bush branch back and letting it brush against his husband. 

He hadn’t quite known what kind of reaction to expect. Frustration, with bunched brows and hastier steps, maybe. Or perhaps just a laugh, cute and stomach churning and heartstopping and at  _ Lance. _ Possibly a mere roll of the knight’s eyes or a scolding shove to Lance’s shoulder. The expectation could have been any of those, but what it definitely wasn’t was the big armful of  _ nothing _ he got. Keith hadn’t said or done anything. Like he hadn’t even registered the branch of a bush that had clanged against the metal over his thighs. His eyes were blank, his lips were drawn tight, his strides were rigid. It made something start to ache again in Lance’s chest, but he ran a hand through the hair on the back of his head and laughed it off. Like he hadn’t even registered the way the empty response had wounded him. Like it didn’t sing a chorus of worried notes and make his eyes sting. Keith was just focused, he figured. The silence didn’t mean anything.

The mage began to stare at his feet, matching his walking speed with his husband’s. There was a stutter in Keith’s pace, a falter in his ruthless march forward, but Lance hardly gave it a thought. Didn’t bat an eye. His mouth opened to start a meaningless conversation about something silly with the man at his side, but he stuttered for a moment when an odd taste hit his tongue. It was familiar, yet not quite something that matched with the scent of pollen in the spring air. He swallowed and prepared a question about that, instead, but the stiffer, stronger sound of another falter—a clash of the sheath of Keith’s sword against his armor as he came to a sudden stop—made Lance’s voice falter the same way. His head lifted, slowly, and scanned the surrounding forest. “What is it?” Then came the sound of scraping metal, a sword being drawn, like two pieces of heavy silverware scratching against each other. Lance squinted at the lines of the trees around him with more vigor. “Is everything alright?” He turned to Keith, since he’d found nothing in the area around them that would warrant a sword. His husband still had that blank look, though now it was aimed at him. Lance tried to trace it back over his shoulder, seeing if the threat was behind him. There was nothing there. “Keith?” His head didn’t face the man quite fast enough because, by the time he was looking to his husband again, the sword was already mid strike. High in the air, outlined by the dark leaves of the canopy above it, glinting in the little bit of sunlight managing to filter through that canopy. Gleaming like a freshly polished set of canine teeth poised to strike. 

All that, and aimed right at Lance. 

His ankle buckled as he stumbled back. He very nearly lost his balance and, with the dirt that flew up as the dodged strike collided with the grass, he was glad he didn’t because Keith hadn’t pulled that swing back. It was aimed to be fatal. The next attack came soon, with a blade still dusted with flakes of dirt from before, and it was a forward, stabbing motion. Lance took another quaking step away from that one, too. He shouted Keith’s name, pairing it with more confused questions. Three attacks in a row came in after that, back and forth and back again, and his dodging of them was sloppy, at best. His head was reeling, his heart was pounding, his eyes were burning because he didn’t understand. He was terrified of the attacks, sure, but he knew—though  _ thought _ seemed more appropriate now—Keith wouldn’t hurt him; they’d worked through that much. They’d worked through that  _ months _ ago and nothing had changed so why? Keith had no reason to swing at Lance.  _ At Lance. _

Lance’s back hit a tree and he barely managed to spin out of the way of the sword that hit it immediately after. He chanced enough of a pause to observe Keith’s face. “Keith, what are you  _ doing? _ ” His eyes were blank. Deep. Deep, not like the kind of deep they looked when he smiled, twinkling like the surface of a body of deep water, but rather the kind of deep of the dark. Deep, like he could dip his hand into the darkness, his whole arm even, without finding the end of that depth. Deep, like those pools alone could smother his screams for help. Deep, like they were  _ hiding something. _ Deep, like there was something lurking within those dark eyes, just underneath the shallow bit of surface Lance could see. They didn’t look like they could truly see anything, like they were made of glass or marble and served no purpose other than to complete a set of facial features. His eyebrows fell flat, too. Not curved up, or dipped down, or furrowed, or conveying any emotion at all. Just flat. “Keith, stop!” The words didn’t make an impact, but Keith’s blade finally did. Lance had frozen up just enough while he was gawking and the weapon scraped a slice of the leather armor over his shoulder off. Not a scratch on Lance, luckily enough. Not yet, at least. At the rate this was going, though, it wouldn’t be long.

Lance readied a spell in his palms, but it snuffed itself out within seconds because, gleaming weapon or not, Keith was his husband. He could dodge, he could run, but hitting back was absolutely not an option. Keith raised his next attack, overhead like a hawk about to swoop, and it stayed there for a moment, like there was a millisecond of lag between the consideration of an attack and when it was actually carried through. Still balancing on jelly ankles, the brunet took that opening and charged the knight in an attempt to wrestle the blade from his tight hold. His hands clasped around Keith’s and his arms had just enough muscle strength to keep the sword from crashing the rest of the way down. It was doomed to be a fruitless effort; there was no holding a human guillotine in place. Even so, he called out to him again, muttered fragile calls of his name, pleaded with those emotionless eyes as they burned his cheeks with the closeness of their dark flare. His nose brushed Keith’s, but the proximity didn’t deter his husband in the slightest. Lance felt something slip away in his arms, the giving out of some muscle, and he teetered a few feet away just in time for another strike to send dirt flying, instead of his flesh. 

Something clogged his throat. They’d worked through this. Keith had made it very clear he wouldn’t hurt Lance so what the hell had changed? The brunet’s motions got slower, like he was moving through a pool of water, like his leg muscles were stretched to maximum tension and couldn’t quite move fast enough. There were needles spiking up his spine and it had become impossible to keep up with Keith’s attacks. He couldn’t dodge him and he couldn’t hurt him. He couldn’t understand, either. Maybe he’d just been wrong the whole time. Maybe the last six months had been a dream and he was finally waking up to that betrayal he’d feared for so long. Maybe he ought to give up. After all, if he couldn’t trust Keith, was there really anyone he could trust in his stead? 

The sinking feeling in his chest rose to his eyes as tears began to pool and then it fell down to his gut, so he felt like he was about to throw up. “Keith.” he choked on the name on its way out. “What the  _ hell _ are you doing?” Another swing and another dodge. The next had Lance backing up into a tree again and the attack lodged itself in the bark as he just barely managed to slip away. He’d let the fear of Keith betraying him like this fall away months ago and it seemed it had come crawling back up behind him. The fear, because of the way he’d let it disappear, had stabbed him in the back. He’d let his guard down and now he could feel the aching, gut wrenching regret of that. 

Except, no, that wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. 

Lance pressed his palms flat against Keith’s chest and shoved with all of his weight. His thighs burned at the effort and strain, his knuckles popped. It hardly made a dent in Keith’s posture, upright and broad, but it set him a few steps back an those couple were enough to give the brunet a few seconds to scurry away. He needed time, even a mere moment, to think. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t right. Keith wouldn’t. He trusted him. With everything he’d been through— _ they’d _ been through—everything Keith had done for him, there was no possibility Keith would ever do this. Lance was sprinting away and, though Keith was gaining on him quickly and audibly, he spared a moment to look over his shoulder. He knew Keith would never aim his sword at Lance, but that was most definitely his husband on his tail. His eyes may have looked more dull and his emotions may have slipped from his expression, but there was no questioning who that man was. That hair was just the right shade of ink, that nose was just sharp enough, that jawline was as defined as it should have been. That was definitely Keith. But Keith would  _ never, _ so just what was going on?

Then he smelled it; he inhaled what he’d tasted earlier. As he wrapped his fingers around the trunk of a tree and spun himself around it, just in time to avoid the hand Keith tried to attach to his shoulder, he panted a huff and sucked another back in. And it was then he’d caught a whiff of it. And it clicked in his mind this time; he knew what it was and what it meant. Magic. The same stench that had hung in the air at the castle the night before. Thick and barely discernible through the smell of the grass he was turning up as he spun on his heel. Just enough to make his lungs feel as though they were shriveling in upon themselves in an attempt to avoid breathing it in. He had been right. Keith  _ wouldn’t _ do this, but someone else would. And if that someone else was controlling Keith, like the attacker last night had been controlling the other soldiers, he could finally figure out a way to hit back. The target of Lance’s attacks didn’t have to be Keith.  He could do this. He  _ had  _ to. All he had to do was find whoever was controlling the head knight and strike them down.

While Lance was built of thinner muscle than Keith, he wasn’t defenseless or weak by any means. Willing the adrenaline in his veins to fuel his next shove, he slammed his palms into the hilt of Keith’s sword and knocked it from his grasp. Keith followed the movement, like the blade had been tied to his finger, but Lance kept him from bending to the ground to grab it. He tucked his arms under Keith’s and gave him the most aggressive hug he’d ever managed. He locked his joints, he pushed all of his weight against the knight’s attempt to reach down. If Keith wanted to get his sword back, he’d have to literally snap the brunet in half. With the way he was still hunching over, though, it seemed like he was able, and willing to, do just that. Lance forced his chin up over Keith’s shoulder, straining to get a look around; he needed to find who was controlling him. 

His eyes were whipping and swiping across the landscape, struggling to locate the spellcaster before Keith managed to shuck Lance off, but the enemy was avoiding his gaze like a bar of soap avoided his hands in the shower. Hands clasped around and began to bruise his hips, eventually shoving hard enough he lost his grip. He didn’t have the time to keep looking, but he wouldn’t have another chance like this and he couldn’t afford to let go. The moment Keith forced him off, he likely wouldn’t be able to get far enough away from him to look for the spellcaster like this again. But right as his head was tugged from over his husband’s shoulder, he finally spotted the enemy. The same one he’d seen in the castle the night before. Clothed in a shade of dark green that matched the color of the grass under the trees, they stood, just barely visible, behind two interwoven birch trees. 

Letting Keith push him off meant the head knight stumbled forward at the newfound ease of getting Lance away. The brunet darted around the tumbling form of his lover and easily charged an attack in his palms. That enemy, far on the horizon and hardly the size of his thumb from his point of view, was a target a bit farther than he was used to. The fight had started a bit closer to them, perhaps, but as Lance dodged Keith’s attacks, he was certain they’d moved quite a few yards farther. Distance couldn’t matter, though. He had one shot, one spell, before two things would prevent him from having any chance at victory. If he missed, Keith would regain his balance before he could take the spellcaster down, which would mean, in all likelihood, a sword in his spine. And if he missed the target, if the spell slipped as he rolled it off his fingers, he would simultaneously lose the edge he got from his element of surprise. So it had to hit. He heard the rattle of Keith’s armor as he righted himself, picked up his sword, and charged at Lance again. He didn’t let it start a tremor in his hands.

And so, the electricity spell he’d charged hit. Dead center of the spellcaster’s chest. And as the enemy fell, so did Lance’s anxiety. It settled back into his stomach, normal and easier to manage than when it had been thrumming in his ears, and Lance let his shoulders go slack. His hand went from aimed to fire at the fallen enemy to resting against his rolling stomach. He turned to face Keith again, expecting the normal depth to be back in his eyes; he thought he’d see the normal sparkling darkness, like the vastness of the starry sky on a clear night. But he was met with the same raised blade, prepared attack, and empty eyes he thought he’d left behind. 

With a silent panic climbing his throat, he began to sprint away again, back away from that spellcaster. He only made it a few meters, before bruising fingers locked over his shoulder pad and yanked him to a stop and spun him around to face another oncoming blow. He couldn’t escape that hold on his arm and his attempt had his feet slipping out from under him and Keith’s sword landing between his knees. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation between that split of the dirt and the next onslaught, but the space between those two events felt like a flaming eternity. Everything was too hot, too burnt. The edges of Lance’s vision were singed; the tips of his fingers were, too. His heart was engulfed in the fearful lapping of fire. The sheen of Keith’s sword as he lifted it over his head again was like a magnifying glass in the bright inferno of the sun and Lance felt like a dried leaf catching fire under its magnified heat. 

“Keith, please,” he garbled. The words sounded like ripples in a puddle and they evaporated under the heat like they were, too. They hit Keith’s ears as nothing more than steam and caused about as much of a reaction as one would expect from plumes of heated water. His attack against the spell caster hadn’t made a difference—perhaps it hadn’t been a fatal blow, perhaps he’d been wrong in his assumption of its effectiveness to begin with, but he didn’t know which—and it seemed his pleas were about as impactful as that useless blow. 

He managed to scramble just a little bit back, a few added feet between Lance and Keith, but Keith took hulking steps to catch up. Lance lifted his gaze and his hands, prepared to attempt a last ditch effort into motion. There was a barrier sizzling just under the skin of his palms, but it fizzed out of existence. Keith’s words, his only words, were the reason. “For Lotor.” The name made Lance freeze up on its own, but when he saw it, watched it, read it tumble from his own husband’s emotionless lips, he was certain he’d died right there. He wasn’t sure what level of hell he’d been sent to, he wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve it, but he couldn’t fight it off any longer. His effort, his very best effort, hadn’t been enough. That sword was still poised to strike and, as Keith took another solid step forward, Lance let his eyes shut in some sort of resignation. Resignation, exhaustion, and fear. 

He let the world around him melt away, let Keith’s presence become washed away to the sounds, smells, and feelings of the forest. The rustle of leaves, the brushing of grass against his legs through his pants. The damp smell of rained upon dirt that would be undoubtedly stuck to his palms and intermingled with the scent of tree bark he’d gotten on them earlier. “I love you,” he uttered, barely loud enough to be heard as anything other than a stray gust of wind. There was another breeze through the trees, likely enough to drown out his sentence, and Lance thought he might be lucky enough for that to be the last thing he heard, instead of yet another footfall and the rattle of armor as Keith’s boot came down again, so the knight was even closer to Lance. How unfortunate that would be what he heard last. 

Only it wasn’t. 

Immediately after that thud, less than enough time for the sound to fully register in Lance’s brain as a footstep, there was another noise. A clatter, a clang of metal against metal, the shudder of a metal blade against the metal of Keith’s boot. Then came another. Sharp, piercing, the intake of a horrified breath that resounded as a quaking gasp. “Oh, Gods.” Lance dared to open his eyes again. He dared to face Keith and his deep eyes. Those deep and  _ soft _ eyes. He could see all the depth, all the way to the bottoms of those twinkling lakes, and how, at the base of those pools, there was an all-consuming sense of guilt. “Oh,” Keith sputtered over the syllable as it fell out. It shuddered like it was a stream of beads that slipped past his lips as he opened his mouth and they were clacking against each other. “Lance, shit, are you,” he choked again. Louder, wheezier, and with sickly colored cheeks. Lance was certain his husband had quite literally gone green. There wasn’t an ounce of warm color in his cheeks. “I can’t believe I…” His knees buckled and he didn’t bother catching himself; his hands didn’t cushion his fall, they merely shakily landed across Lance’s face. The pads of his thumbs swept over the skin there. 

The brunet could see over the crown of his head as he ducked forward. His nose bowed and Lance, while still too shaken to move, got a brief look at the space behind him before Keith lifted his face again. He was dimly aware, like the sight was merely light under a blanket, of how empty the area behind those intertwined birch trees was. He saw the twirl of the tail end of a cloak a little past that point. It seemed he’d put just the right amount of space between Keith and the spellcaster in his frightened scurry away and so the spell he’d been manipulated with had lost its potency. He would have expected that cloaked figure to simply move forward a bit to compensate for the added distance, but perhaps they’d decided retreat was a better option; maybe his attack had worked after all. Though just barely. 

“Keith, are you still trying to kill me?” There was a wobbling laugh at the end of the question. Wavering, just like the unsteady pounding of his heart. The organ was revving up, then slowing down, then speeding again. His throat felt dry. He was certain he hadn’t really asked the question as much as he’d croaked it, but the downward slip of Keith’s head, until it hit Lance’s collarbones, told him Keith hadn’t cared. 

“No.” His tone was simple and it lacked the same dry humor of Lance’s empty laugh. “Are you hurt?” A pair of watery eyes gave a trembling stare through the parts in Keith’s long, dark hair as he lifted his head from Lance’s chest. Lance forced his chin side to side in a weak, stiff shake of his head. “Gods, I could have killed you! I was going to,” hands wedged between Lance’s spine and the grass he was sprawled across and Keith lifted him up. The flesh beneath his touch shuddered and ached and Lance couldn’t tell if it was his body’s attempt to warn him of danger in his husband’s arms or if it was merely the result of all that adrenaline he’d had pumped throughout his bloodstream. He let the knight lift him, though, and hold him to his chest. There was a drip of something onto his scalp, then a brush of Keith’s nose in the same spot. “I’m sorry.”

Lance’s nose swished across Keith’s chest in disagreement. “It wasn’t you, you don’t have to be sorry.”

A grumble reverberated along Keith’s collarbones, “Lance, if I ever hurt you I,” the vibrations stopped. The brunet lifted his head to look at Keith with eyes he was sure were weak. Shining with tears the same way Keith’s sword, the one he had yet to find the will to pick back up, shimmered with sunlight. His eyebrows were undoubtedly strung together. So were Keith’s, Lance realized, when the head knight finally tilted his chin up enough for Lance to see his features. It seemed the head knight was unable to look into Lance’s eyes quite yet, though. “You can’t let me hurt you. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I ended up doing that to you.” 

“I’m not going to hurt you either.” There was a protest climbing its way past Keith’s parted lips and a fire beginning to smolder in those deep eyes, but Lance cut it off, snuffed those scraps of flames. “We’re in this together, Keith.” Slipping a hand under Keith’s long hair and brushing against the side of his neck, he felt an unnatural wetness there. When he tucked the hair behind Keith’s ear, he saw an injury, no bigger than a prick of a needle, positioned there. He swung forward and pecked Keith’s lips, saving the mention of it for a time when they both weren’t so anxious. “We’re just going to have to find another way to not let that happen again.”

Keith had passed over a fragile smile along with another kiss, accepting both the affectionate actions and the prospect of finding a better solution. A few hundred yards away, though, a woman pondered a solution of her own with a palm rubbing the injury Lance had left across her chest. Truth was, Keith hadn’t stepped out of the range of her spell at all; he’d gotten out of her control some other way. She’d underestimated the will of her foes. Before this moment, she’d had, what she thought was, a method of executing her plan that was halfway decent, but clearly such a conclusion was no longer reasonable. So she needed a different solution. 

The head knight doing the dirty work had been scratched off her list of viable methods of killing Lance. Smothered in thought, she tapped a few anxious fingers along the armor over her thigh as the two men across the forest recovered and began again on their path forward. Keith wouldn’t run his blade through his husband, no matter how many spells she cast, by the looks of it.

It seemed Narti would have to do it herself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be nice to me in the comments!! I am the sickly   
> tell me what you thought!!


	4. And So, Fear Rises and Falls Like the Tide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *in vine voice* I got my update done and it's time to fuckin' party *hits head on sleep deprivation*
> 
> Enjoy, tho!!
> 
> (it's a day late because I played deltarune instead of writing one day this week. But u won't get an apology from me for it. 100% worth it.)
> 
> Edit: I went back and added a few sentences in the middle of this 'cuz I realized some of my worldbuilding wasn't complete rip

It was a drip in the back of his mind. A leaky faucet of negativity pooling fears in the cavity of his skull and drowning his brain. Keith didn’t know what to do. He didn’t trust himself. The knight had gone so far as to make Lance carry his sword for him because he couldn’t bring himself to look at it, let alone to hold it, to raise it, to _use_ it. The palms of his hands should have been painted some incriminating color, a guilty shade of red or grey so everyone could see what he’d done. He, a husband and the pride and joy of the Altean army, had very nearly killed his own husband. Lance said it hadn’t really been him and that he shouldn’t feel guilty, but how could he not?

He’d promised. He’d _promised._ That he would keep Lance safe and, even if not that much, at least _he_ wouldn’t hurt Lance. It had been a _promise._ Keith wasn’t someone who often made promises and when he did, he certainly didn’t go back on them. But this time, he had. He’d gone back on one of the most important promises he’d made in his life and he was furious with himself for it. All of his skin itched and he wanted to peel it off, his mouth tasted odd and he wanted to scrape away whatever magic flavor had been left there, every brush of his hair on his neck was irritating and he felt his temper rising. He was so completely disgusted with himself. Despite not remembering the entirety of the attack and being unable to wrap his head around whatever he may have done, he was disgusted with both. They were pieces, scraps, crumbs of what had happened, merely the front and tail end of the event, yet they still burrowed under his skin and made him feel sick.

The meat of the whole thing was a blank spot in his memory. He could hardly remember the prick of something on his neck and after that, everything was gone. Had it been an hour of trying to kill his husband? A mere minute? Just how long had Lance been forced to look at Keith as an enemy, a threat, a _danger?_ Even now, when Keith moved too quickly, the brunet would whip his head up with such a frail and terrified look in his eyes; it made the head knight physically ill to think about. And when he’d awoken from his stupor before, the look Lance had worn then was even worse. He’d had tears clinging to his eyelashes, an _I love you_ on his trembling lips, and a shudder in his voice. Worst of all was the resignation he’d worn on his closed eyelids. The white flag stitched over the flesh there made Keith’s stomach contents rise to the back of his throat.

He’d heard the declaration of love. When thinking back, he’d hit the dark patch of a lapse in memory, then he’d hit that simple statement. Weak. Fragile. Vulnerable. But so, so sincere. So sincere his heart throbbed in his chest like a fresh wound every time he thought about it. Tugging a hand down his face, he tried to steady his breaths. “I love you, too,” he managed. Lance looked up at him from his position at his side, eyes wide and eyebrows strung together in confusion. He still looked so vulnerable and Keith’s sword looked too big, too heavy, too violent in his arms. His fingers around the hilt were like flower petals in the mud; they were somewhere they didn’t belong. And the confusion drawn onto his features was out of place, too, like rain falling from a cloudless sky, sadness out of place. “Before, I remember you saying you loved me. It’s all I can remember, but I never said it back, so,” he let his words trail off. A hand wrapped loosely around his own and a pair of watery, blue eyes squinted.

“Thank you.” Lance shuffled the sword in his hold, before slipping it back into the sheath Keith was wearing. The knight was about to tell him not to, but Lance looked directly into his eyes and murmured, “I trust you. It’s okay.” The soft way he said it, like the words flitted about the air and wrapped Keith up in a hug, like they were a blanket being draped over his shoulders, had him trusting himself, too. If he’d been able to snap out of the control spell before, he was positive he could do it again. There wouldn’t be a second time. The ache in his chest, the burn of the back of his throat, the pain in his muscles, all told him as much. His fingers still felt pricked with anxiety, but he figured he’d make it through regardless. He felt a little better when Lance squeezed those pained fingers, leaning closer and humming, “I love you,” dramatically and drawn out with a cheek to Keith’s shoulder.

He laughed a little; it was a fragile, shaky noise, like it would give out under its own weight. “I know, Lance. I love you, too.” Lance took his hand from Keith’s and moved it to cup the side of Keith’s neck, instead, so he could lean him sideways and closer. The brunet turned his face to kiss the temple he’d brought down. Another laugh, less fragile and less anxious, stirred in Keith’s chest and rattled his heart softly. The laugh swished it back and forth in a puddle of something sweet he got drunk off of and something that made his cheeks burn affectionately. A shot of warm tea through his veins. “Hey,” he huffed when Lance squished his nose against the side of his face and landed another sloppy smooch against the swell of his cheek.

“I love you,” he said again and his lips slobbered against Keith’s cheek as he did. The head knight swatted him off his face with a strong laugh, but Lance merely moved his arms about his waist and pressed his lips to Keith’s neck. He let a gentler kiss settle there and after, he breathed another, “I love you.” And he paused for a moment, like his words were clinging to the back of his throat or his thoughts were muddled in his head. “So much,” he said, even more softly. “So don’t go beating yourself up. I love you. I don’t trust anyone more than I trust you.”

Keith stopped walking. Damn it, Lance always knew what to say. His eyes burned now, as he trained them on his husband. His gaze was heavy, weighted with all his heart’s affection and all his brain’s appreciation. Lance’s was feathery with understanding and bright with sunlight. He smiled gently at Keith, patient and benevolent, and the look on his face was so pleasant, the knight almost forgot to say it back. He wanted to tell every feature how much he loved it. His eyes, so blue and deep and calming, like the sky when it peaked through heavy layers of clouds. _I love you._ His smile, so easy, so simple, so pleasant, and so soothing he felt his own lips melt to match it. _I love you._ As he reached a hand out to cradle the back of Lance’s neck, his pulse, so steady and assuring that Keith’s pulse followed its lead and relaxed from its anxious pace. “I love you.” He tasted salt on his lips and swung forward to pass the flavor onto his husband in a brief kiss. “Thank you.”

Lance grinned a smile that was brighter than the sun and any other star, but that was soft and mellow like a mere flame atop a candle. Keith would have to be the candle because his whole body melted under the warmth of that smile. “Any time.” He brushed the tears on Keith’s cheeks away with gentle thumbs. Keith shed more at the tenderness of it, which just made Lance squeeze another laugh past his lips. “Hey, now. You should be happy, Keith.” _I am,_ he wanted to say. He was so happy, so grateful, so beyond himself, he couldn’t help crying. “You’re finally gonna be able to meet my family in person. Isn’t that exciting?” Keith wanted to pepper his curved lips, his fluttering lashes, his whole bright face with kisses. He was never one to deny his impulses, so he nudged Lance’s hands away with a gentle nod of his head and he pushed forward to brush his salty smile along every inch he could reach. No centimeter of soft flesh was spared.

“It is,” he answered. The sound was more of a croak than anything and it was cracked along the seams with vulnerability, yet it still retained its genuine, soft sound. Lance’s cheeks caved into a wider smile. “You talk about them a lot. Now I’ll know what the fuss is all about.” Lance managed to smile more, even after his grin had already grown so much.

Keith had meant what he said about being excited to meet Lance’s family. He’d met his mother at their wedding, but she’d been the only one who had been able to come, so the rest of Lance’s family members were just pictures painted by all of Lance’s stories and his vague, positive descriptions of their faces. In fact, he was excited to see the whole of Lance’s childhood. As the trees in the forest thinned out, he could feel just a bit of excitement rising in his gut, a steady drumbeat of a reminder that everything around him was starting to become the surroundings Lance grew up with. It was like the countdown to a prize, the promise of getting to see something about Lance that very few people had gotten the privilege to see. It felt almost intimate.

There were new scents mingling in the air as new varieties of trees and new blooms of flowers came into view. Keith wondered if Lance had grown up around these sunny, sweet scents. They somehow seemed to suit the man at his side; they were bright and pleasant and sweet. The canopy of the forest had thinned out and the sun was just slightly past the middle of the sky, starting its decline to the horizon, but still nowhere near the day’s end. A couple clouds tumbled along the sky, but they were clean and untainted by a rainy color. The ground, the trees, the whole forest would go grey whenever a cloud passed over the sun and each time, Keith found his eyes drawn to Lance. The dull reflection of shaded light in the deep colors of his eyes. The shadows over his lips. The glow of his skin, even when there was no sunlight to bring upon such a shine. Keith silently asked himself if Lance had always looked so handsome or if it was the prospect of seeing his family and home that made him seem brighter, the way people always do when they talk about something they love. The thought of all of Lance’s family being that stunning passed his mind.

He figured it only natural.

Keith was eager to meet them—his reportedly smiling, welcoming, loving family—but he was sure he’d likely be overwhelmed by it all when he actually got there. There were a lot of them and he’d memorized their names from all of Lance’s stories, yet he knew there would be a steep learning curve. He’d have to learn the ways of handling so many voices, so many faces, and so much noise—he’d grown up without many people around him, after all. But he knew, at the very least, he wouldn’t have to worry about winning them over; Lance had been writing letters back to his family and Keith was certain they all painted him in a positive light. They’d been the magical kind of letters he had never quite understood, with the way they seemed to turn to ashes, but they received replies nonetheless, so he knew they worked. They were one of the few types of magic allowed since Iago had passed that law and a kind of magic almost everyone in Altea knew, but Keith, having grown up elsewhere, had been kept out of the loop. Before he’d proposed, however, he’d had to send one of those confusing letters to Lance’s family to ask permission—Lance seemed like someone who cared about gaining his family’s approval, after all—and Keith had figured it would be worth going out of his way to ask. Whatever it took, even those confusing letters.

Lance had always talked about growing up far away. He’d mentioned how difficult it was to visit, he’d whined about the cold in Castle Town because he grew up in the desert, but when Keith had decided he wanted to propose, the knight had realized he didn’t actually know where exactly Lance’s family lived. It took a lot of digging in the archives of the Altean Castle and a lot of looking through yellowing, fraying files, but he’d eventually dug up Lance’s records and he’d found the location of Lance’s hometown. Still, that hadn’t been the end of his troubles. Next, he’d ended up begging Pidge for help. It was, by far, one of the most humiliating things he’d ever been forced to do.

He’d say forced because the knight had seen the day for his proposal fastly approaching and he wouldn’t make it without her help. He’d picked out that specific day months prior because it was, in all accounts, the perfect day to propose. Lance had insisted upon the upkeep of their silly tradition of planning dates in pairs so, every year on their anniversary weekend, Lance would get the Saturday for his date and Keith would get the Sunday for his. Just like their first pair of dates. This particular year, however, their actual anniversary happened to be on the exact Sunday Keith got for his date, an event Keith had seen coming for sixth months and had been planning for a just as long. But he’d spent so long plotting out the event, it was now only about a month away and he still had yet to send the eloquently put letter he’d written for Lance’s family. He’d yet to ask permission.

“Pidge, please.” It had been mid afternoon when he’d begun to plead for her help on the matter. He’d trailed behind her with anxiously tapping feet and a letter dangling from his fingertips while she skirted out of the way of all of his begging advances and down the castle hallways. Her footsteps were heavy and annoyed against the gentle fluff of the flooring. “Could you please just send it? I have the address and everything!” She stopped moving suddenly at that, digging her heel into the blue fabric beneath it and twirling all her weight around that point. Annoyance was written in her eyes and her pupils flecked larger and smaller peevishly. “You’re the only mage I trust not to blab to Lance.”

“Is your boyfriend really the kinda guy who cares about stupid traditions like this?” The woman took the pristine envelope from between Keith’s trembling fingers and gave it a halfhearted, but frustrated, once over. Her gaze was harsh, but the way she cradled the paper was anything but. It hung on her palm like Keith hung on her words; like even the slightest misstep, the slightest squeeze in her grip would wrinkle it and as if the mere existence of a wrinkle was unforgivable. She looked up from the elegant parchment with a disinterested lick of her bottom lip. Keith gulped nervously, feeling as though he were trapped in her violent snare of a look. He nodded. With a huff, Pidge turned and began to walk away. “I’ll tell you when they respond, loverboy. You owe me something big.”

She had never ended up collecting that IOU from the knight.

Even so, she had upheld her part of the deal and Keith pestered her every day, badgering her for a response she’d yet to receive. Just as often, she’d flipped him off. Then Keith would go off sulking to Hunk, another thing he’d been too embarrassed to admit since, and Hunk would provide mindless pats on the back the knight couldn’t ask his boyfriend for. But one day when Keith asked Pidge, begged while looking into her eyes, got ready to grovel at her feet, and was seconds away from beginning to kiss the carpet around her boots, she finally passed him the piece of paper he’d been waiting for.

It had been tucked into a fairly hefty envelope. Keith hadn’t been able to tell if the envelope itself was thick and bulky, or if the paper inside was merely the source of the added weight. Whether it was weighted with something physical or emotional was something Keith also didn’t know. He wasn’t sure if the way his arms seemed to give under the weight of it when it was passed over was because it had loads of pages folded neatly into the pouch made by that cute triangle folded over that adorable rectangle, or if it was merely the possible emotional turmoil written upon those pages that caused the burden on his fingertips. Regardless of where the lead in his arms came from, though, the way he was filled with dread as a result existed nonetheless. He’d been counting the seconds, the minutes, the hours, and the days, until this letter came and now that it sat atop his sweaty, shaking palms he didn’t know quite what to do with it. The letter might as well have been placed over his eyes because he felt as though he was blind. Or it was crumpled into a ball in his throat, for he was speechless. How does someone open a letter again? Was he even literate; had he ever been taught to read? Seeing his name scrawled across the top of the envelope and recognizing it as something damn near foreign made him doubt his ability to read, despite knowing it existed.

Not that he could have read it then anyway. He couldn’t read it at work. Good or bad news, he didn’t want to disturb his coworkers with his reactions and he knew his tears would yield puddles regardless of what words were written inside that unbearably cute envelope. So, he waited until he got home and even then, it took a lot of effort to move his heavy fingers and motivate them to tear open the letter. He ripped the flap up and ran a fingertip along the streaks of what used to be sticky on the inside of that flap. His fingers then dipped into the actual pouch of the envelope and fiddled with the folded paper inside. He tugged it out. Slowly, uneasily; he was procrastinating. Resituating himself at the desk tucked into the corner of the room he and Lance shared, he found himself flattening the envelope on the tabletop. He smoothed out wrinkles that didn’t matter, he dug his nails along the crease to deepen the fold, he fiddled with the edges of papers which were curling up and just slightly open. Twirling cursive letters poked through that opening and he could read the first few letters of his name at the top, almost exactly how Lance would write them. Keith smiled and finally he was comfortable unfolding the letter, so he did, the motion smearing those first couple letters with the sweat on the pads of his thumbs. Then he read the rest.

It was really less of a _read_ and more of a _skimmed._ His patience had worn thin, so thin he swore the letters on the page had been worn just as thin and were fading as a result. If felt like they’d slip right off the page and flutter downwards, waving back and forth as though they were leaves until they landed in an unintelligible scatter across his lap. Like they were thinner than the very page they sat upon and they were partially transparent and impossible to decipher. But he’d gotten the gist of them.

He’d been right; Lance wrote home about him. It was the brunet’s mother who’d written the response to Keith’s inquiry—he probably should have guessed from the delicacy of the swirls of her words—and she’d said Lance had written about him frequently. There was something in there about trusting Lance’s judgement, something in there about trusting everything they’d heard about Keith, but what really caught Keith’s attention was the neatly scrawled _yes_ at the bottom of the page. He read it once. Twice. Three more times. Every single time he read it, it still wrote the same positive word; he knew it was true.

Still cradling the paper like a wounded bird, he flipped it back onto the desk, face down. His hands went up to cup his face, the apples of his grinning cheeks, the gentle drip of his eyes, the happy furrow of his brows. He could feel his eyelashes flutter against his palms speedily to compensate for the waterworks he’d known were coming. Keith heard the floorboards in the hallway outside the room creak at the same time his chair did, as he leaned back. His nose pointed at the ceiling, as though it were two hands pressed together as a prayer aimed at the gods. He was thanking them for a blessing, but his hands were still cupping his watering eyes and he didn’t see Lance come in as a result. Hearing his tentative footsteps was easy, though. He crept slowly closer until Keith could see his confused face hooked over his own upturned one through the splits between his cried-upon fingers.

“Is something wrong?” The words Lance asked seemed just as uncertain as his footsteps into the room had been and they practically stuck to his lips like gum. He must have just finished up in his tailor shop next door, too, because there were faint dents on his finger from the inside of a thimble as he swept Keith’s hands away from his face. Keith brought Lance’s wandering fingers to his lips and kissed each one, squeezing the brunet’s palm tightly as he did. There was a liquid giggle from Lance as he wiggled his fingers to try to get away. “Keith, c’mon, why are you crying?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Just got good news.” He stood up to resituate himself on his desk chair. Backwards, straddling the spine of the seat, he reached up to Lance again to bring his boyfriend’s face to his own. They bumped noses and Lance palmed the back of Keith’s chair to steady himself before he teetered over onto the knight. His teeth were poking through his grin, as Keith’s mood seemed to have worn off on him. “And I’m excited.” Lance slipped his teeth back behind his lips to hum in quiet, unpressing confusion. “Our anniversary’s next month. I’m gonna win this year.” His wet fingers trailed up to Lance’s hair as the brunet laughed so his eyes squeezed shut.

“Wouldn’t be so sure about that, but, what was that about good news?” He slipped a few locks of Keith’s hair behind his ear so it no longer brushed against his shoulder or his cheekbone and so it no longer clung to the pink skin of his face. “What was the news?” Lance reached around Keith’s shoulders with both arms to grab at the letter that had been put down earlier. The knight pulled his face down, though, until he was close enough to bring their mouths together and the moment he drew his tongue along Lance’s bottom lip, the man’s arms turned to jelly and his palms fell from their reach to along Keith’s spine. Crisis averted, prize obtained.

Keith pulled back to find Lance still staring at the insides of his eyelids and leaning forward into where Keith’s lips had been before. “I’ll tell you some other time,” he murmured against the newly pouting lips, before he swept back in. And he’d meant that assurance he’d given his boyfriend. He had to fight off Lance’s questions about the mystery news for a month, but when their anniversary finally came around, he didn’t let himself chicken out. It took actually having the ring made to solidify the event in his mind.

With a bit of sneaking around, he’d been able to snatch a ring from Lance’s sock drawer when he wasn’t looking. He’d given it to Hunk to give to the jeweler, so he could be certain the sizing was right. That had taken a while and while the jeweler still had Lance’s ring, Keith’s boyfriend had been looking for it to wear. The knight had just about jumped out of his skin when Lance asked him if he’d seen it, but he managed a flustered shake of his head to brush off the question. His boyfriend had been disappointed, but not suspicious. Keith had eventually gotten the ring back and been able to slip it back into Lance’s sock drawer without being caught. And as that ring went into the sock drawer, the engagement ring and its plush, little box fell into Keith’s coat pocket.

He’d carried it with him everywhere because, while he had the perfect proposal planned out, something even better than the stellar thing he’d thought of could always come along and the best moment for a proposal could easily strike whenever. He’d taken it on Lance’s date, too. Some competitive part of him kept him from ever actually considering proposing there, though, because if he did, Lance would win their annual date competition for sure. He wanted to be able to hang it all over his boyfriend’s head; the perfect date, the perfect proposal, the way Lance had _finally_ been thoroughly one-upped in the romance department, he fully intended on bragging about it forever. He wasn’t about to give that all up because he was impatient and wanted to pull the ring out now.

Lance’s date was cute, so the temptation was definitely there. He’d brought them both to a ball of some sort and he’d personally made Keith a sharp, white suit—one the knight would definitely be wearing to every acceptable occasion from now on, to brag—and he’d made himself one, too. The sleeves were trimmed in red and blue, respectively. There were cute, buttoned shirts to go with and those little squares gentlemen were supposed to tuck into their breast pockets. Keith hadn’t had much experience with this side of formality—he only knew the knight kind—so he just acted however his boyfriend told him to act. It was a change of pace since Lance usually deferred to Keith’s knightly orders, because Keith had more formal events than he did, but Keith truly did enjoy the event. The food was excellent and the dancing was frequent, and any excuse to hold Lance close was a win in his book. Yet, as the evening dance came to an end and Keith got to return home to his comfy clothes and the plushness of his sheets and the warmth of his boyfriend in bed with him, he was still confident his date would win.

He woke up slowly the next morning. The first step to the date was a late lunch, so he didn’t have much going on in the morning. Lance woke up slowly, too. Keith was fully awake when he finally started to stir, though, so he got to see his sticky eyelids slip open and feel his arms close tighter around Keith’s frame. Warm palms along his back and a sharp nose pressed between his collarbones. He got to watch the sleep leave his boyfriend’s eyes slowly and to see his pupils focus on Keith’s face with a grin parting his lips. The knight stood up to cross the room, then reached out to palm the pocket of the coat hanging on the corner of the door, to palm the ring inside. Lance stirred more, sitting up in bed and rubbing at his drooping lids with closed fists, and he groaned at the way Keith had left. With a smile pressing urgently on his dry lips, Keith could feel his nerves and doubts about proposing slipping away.

He wanted to do this.

His anxiety still beat inside him with every pump of his heart, but he whiled away the morning hours and enjoyed it well enough. And when it finally came to their late lunch, he enjoyed that too. He slipped his thumb over the ring box every few seconds, constantly worried it had slipped out when he wasn’t paying attention, but he enjoyed himself. Lance seemed to enjoy himself, too, judging by the giddy smile he wore the whole evening and the soft way he gripped Keith’s hands over the tabletop as they awaited their meal. Then came the next part of the date and a new wave of anxiety crashed down upon his heart like a hawk diving into a strike, aimed to kill.

This part was a setup exactly the same as their first date. Keith would wedge open that boat shop’s service window and drag a boat out for a few hours. It would strike up memories about their first date, it would be a romantic flashback, it would be the perfect lead-in to a proposal; he’d truly outdone himself with this idea. As he nudged Lance towards the boat shop at the edge of the lake, it was a little like watching a toddler to assure the avoidance of a disaster. Keith was probably stressing himself out, fretting over being certain everything was perfect, but he only got one shot at this, so he _had_ to be certain. He wouldn’t get a perfect shot like this again. It was their anniversary, it was his date day, there’d been good weather, and there was the absence of any screw-ups so far; a day like this would never come again. And when Lance slipped on the mud, Keith had been able to steady his boyfriend before he landed his nose in the dirt. When he’d narrowly missed Lance’s head with the boat as he was heaving it up and over the counter, Lance had seemed more amused by the mistake than anything else. When he’d splashed Lance with the lake water because his shaky grip couldn’t stick to the boat and his end of the item crashed against the shore, saving the date had been a little difficult, but he’d done it.

The water had splattered across Lance’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose and as he wrinkled that feature in the beginnings of disgust, the droplets of filthy liquid followed the creases of his face and trailed downward. Lance dropped his end of the boat to wipe at his face, but Keith was faster. He took two quick, long strides and he was there, trailing his lips over the dripping skin in fleeting kisses. Lance wrinkled his nose again, but this time into a smile as he swatted his hands at Keith’s cheeks. “Sorry,” Keith muttered in a muted, halfhearted kind of way. His apology was snuffed out by the skin his lips were pressed to, overpowered by the vibration of Lance’s cheeks as he laughed, by the crinkle of the flesh there as he answered that it was fine. Keith pulled back and when Lance turned to resettle his end of the boat into the lake, he brought a hand to yank at the skin of his face tiredly. It was a ton of work being so perfect. He couldn’t wait until he could go back to being endearingly sloppy in his affection.

Lance was starting to look suspicious, too. He was squinting at all of Keith’s desperate attempts to keep things running smoothly. Every little slip-up had a correction right after and Lance had begun to notice. “You’re really hellbent on winning this year, huh?” Keith didn’t pay attention to Lance’s question, focusing instead on offering a hand to be sure Lance got into the boat without wobbling over into the lake. The brunet accepted the offered hand, but only so he could yank it closer and snatch Keith’s undivided focus. “You’re being weird. Is something wrong?” Keith let his hand remain tightly gripped and pulled to rest against his boyfriend’s chest and his eyes went to the same place in his attempt to avoid Lance’s concerned gaze. He shook his head slowly and his ears began to burn with the fear of being found out, like another injection of anxiety into his bloodstream that lit his whole head ablaze. He worried teeth marks into his bottom lip, then turned back up to see Lance looking even more concerned than he’d been a minute ago. His eyebrows were drawn together like one of his sewing needles had been strung through the ridge of his brows and pulled taut. His lip had its own row of straight teeth digging marks into it. His hand lost the ferocity of its hold on Keith’s, then lost any contact at all, then slapped uselessly against the brunet’s thigh as it fell. There was the sharp sound of an inhalation, then it was whittled off to silence again as Lance paused. “Alright.”

Keith felt panic spike again. That wasn’t a happy word, with how it sounded a few pitches lower than it should have. That wasn’t a happy face, with how it drooped to face the mindless step forward of Lance into the boat. That wasn’t a happy sigh he released after, with how it seemed to deflate his entire posture into a slouch. But the way he lifted his head again after a brief shake, the way he faced Keith again with a smile, was far from the lack of happiness he’d previously exuded so openly. Perhaps Lance also wanted the date to be a success.

“So,” Lance began again. “Reusing old ideas?” It was Keith’s turn to board, so he stepped into the boat and placed himself only half gently on the seat across from his boyfriend. He began to row and he flashed a soft smile as he did, as well as gave a nod to answer Lance’s question. “What, am I not worth thinking of something new for?” There was jest in that tone, but Keith dropped his oars into the dirty water in horror at the implication anyway. He startled at the splash they made, but his hands still went to wave about the air defensively, instead of to the oars he’d dropped.

“That’s not why I,” he sputtered, finally moving to fish the old wood back out of the lake. He wrinkled his nose at his lack of words, at the congestion of his thoughts in his throat, and at the muddy dirt rubbing off onto his palms from the lake water. When he turned back to Lance, he noticed a few of those same mud stains in the shape of the kisses he’d left on his cheeks earlier. Keith rubbed the back of his hand against the swell of his lips before beginning again. “That wasn’t why I chose here.” Lance leaned forward attentively in his seat, chin on his palm and elbow on his knee, while Keith began to row again.

Keith wondered if now would be the right moment to propose. Probably not, since they were so close to shore, but how long could he stall without it seeming like he was lying? And he couldn’t pull the box out while his hands were covered in mud; that wasn’t the image he wanted Lance to think back on. He noticed the brunet across from him reach a foot out to nudge his own. “Keith?” He cracked his neck to one side, stalling again. Lance furrowed his brows as some form of annoyance made a home across the fire of his cheeks. “Keith.” The knight cracked his neck the other way. He smiled at the way more annoyance bloomed along Lance’s ears. “Keith,” the boards at the bottom of the boat creaked as Lance stood hastily up, “I swear,” he took a slow step forward, but his thighs went visibly liquid and he rocked violently to one side. “Oh, _fuck._ ”

There was a crash, much too loud and much too wet, after that vulgar cry.

“Lance!” Keith scrambled to the edge of the boat, all sorts of panic drumming in his head, but none of them relating to the ring in his pocket. “Lance!” He’d long since dropped the oars by now and they floated on the surface of the water again, releasing clouds of their dust into the water around them. Keith’s hands were now giving the edge of the boat a white knuckled squeeze as he leaned over the surface of the water and watched the mop of Lance’s hair burst through the waves he’d caused. He thought about all that newfound panic. How cold was the water? Did he have to worry about hypothermia? Gods, could Lance swim? He’d forgotten.

The brunet was hacking a storm as he worked a shuddering doggy paddle back to the closest bit of shore. He crawled once the water was shallow enough and he bunched the water sausages at the edge of the lake in fists as he sputtered even more. Keith forgot how to move for a moment, staring at the floating oars, then back at Lance, then wondering how he could possibly get from one to the other. The realization came so fast he felt a migraine begin to pulsate behind his eyes, but he scooped the oars back out. He would have probably won any rowing contest with the record speed he set rowing to shore after that.

When he got there, he stumbled over the edge of the boat in his haste to get out. Lance was still coughing and his face had gone red with how little air was reaching his lungs. Keith squatted awkwardly next to him, placing a palm to his spine as he tried to spit up the water that had gone down the wrong way. Eventually, Lance stopped his wheezing and it was only then that the consequences of the most recent events finally settled into Keith’s mind. Despite all his fussing, despite all his focus, and despite catching Lance every time he’d tripped, the wet state of his newly knotted hair, the redness of his cheeks, and the suffocated, glassy look in his eyes all told him he’d failed. All that avoidance and he’d failed to stop the slip-up.

Huffing quietly to himself and scowling, Keith shrugged his coat angrily off his shoulders. He yanked it into his hands to flip it right-side-in again. Lance gave him the most pathetic look when he smoothed it over his shivering back, eyebrows once again sewn together and lips quickly turning purple. The ends of his hair were dripping, every lock of it was glued to his head and shaped to perfectly fit the skull underneath. His eyelashes were dripping lake water, too, and leaving trails of brown on his chattering chin. Keith cupped his face, squishing his cheeks and smudging them with more dirt. The action was meant to get rid of dirt, but it just made it all worse. It was far more aggressive than he meant, too. He was mad at himself. He’d messed up his one shot. He was taking all that frustration out on the poor lake muck dripping and oozing down Lance’s cheeks, too frustrated to realize his attempts were merely spreading it all. He did realize it eventually, though, and he let his palms fall back against his thighs when he did. He wiped the mud off his hands and onto his pants, then started to rub them up and down Lance’s arms because, try as he might to hide it, the brunet was still very clearly shivering.

“Guess I win,” Lance muttered, voice hoarse. Keith felt his stomach bubble angrily at the observation, but it was ultimately correct, so he just huffed again. His shoulders slumped dejectedly. “But you never told me why you chose here. I’m still convinced you were just too lazy to come up with something new.” The knight sat straighter at that accusation and he gave an angry shout of the beginning of a rebuttal. It fell short when he spotted an unsightly bit of water sausage in his boyfriend’s hair. Plucking it out and flicking it to the side, he prepared to begin again, but Lance spoke instead. “And you’re acting all, I dunno, distant?” The brunet gulped thickly and Keith watched his eyes flick to the way he was bunching his palms in his lap, like his knuckles were a cloth he was trying to wring the water out of. “Is everything,” his eyes locked back onto Keith’s, “Keith, are you okay?” The knight was at a loss for an answer for a moment and that moment alone was enough for Lance to wedge his way back in. “Are _we_ okay?”

Keith fumbled with his thoughts for a few seconds. He was wholly at a loss on what to say. “What do you mean?” He knew what Lance meant. Why had he asked that? His tongue was working faster than his head. Lance brought his trembling fingers to push his wet bangs back from his forehead, glancing downwards again. The way his eyelashes shrouded any vision Keith had of those blue, blue eyes made him appear so miserable and Keith tasted the death of his words on his tongue. Lance wrung his fingers even harder and one of Keith’s hands worked Lance’s apart. “Lance.” His voice was softer than he thought possible and he felt the jerk of Lance’s spine in a start of a sob as much as he saw it. His hands started to quake in Keith’s; the knight’s one free hand grew a mind of its own from the fright that feeling elicited within him. It started patting down where his pocket used to sit against his stomach. It wasn’t the perfect time—he’d decided it never would be—but his words were failing him and the ring was his only chance at explaining everything and stopping that sad, sad look and keeping away those heart wrenching sobs without those words he’d lost the ability to speak. But the ring wasn’t there.

He slapped his stomach, swiveling his spine in his search, but then he remembered. The jacket was draped cutely over Lance’s dripping frame. Swaying forward, the knight first cradled the brunet’s cheek, brushing a thumb over more of that mud. Then he slipped a hand into the jacket pocket he’d passed so willingly over. “Keith, what are you,” the brunet brought the back of his hand up to wipe the snot from his nose and stopped talking when he did. Keith kept the soft box concealed in his hand for only a second and then he was fumbling to crack it open, still on both his knees and still keeping one hand on Lance’s face. Lance’s eyes shot to it when it finally clicked into the open position and his jaw opened the same way; Keith swore he could hear that click, too.

“Sorry, I wanted to go the whole day without messing this up, but I clearly didn’t,” he trailed off and his hand left Lance’s cheek to yank his hair up off his shoulders because the back of his neck suddenly felt too hot and too humid. “I wanted it to be perfect. ‘Cuz you mean so much to me and you _deserve_ it to be perfect. But now you’re all soaked and cold and you think I’m trying to be _distant_ and that’s the opposite of,” he coughed, changing the route of his sentence quickly. “I love you, sorry. I wanna love you forever. Can I?” He nudged the box forward and into Lance’s chest as an accent to his inquiry. The brunet’s eyes sparkled brighter than the metal of the ring Keith had gotten and the knight wondered if a metal as vibrant as Lance’s loving gaze even existed. “I asked your parents already,” he tacked onto the end as an afterthought. “But it’s still up to you, obviously. I want to call you my husband, but if you’re not comfortable yet, I get that.”

“You’re rambling,” Lance mused, lifting his dripping head to look Keith in the eyes again. He pushed the bangs gently off of Keith’s face, a tender look on his features as he did. It shot a shudder up Keith’s spine; the ice from his fingers and warmth from his affection at the same time was more than a little overwhelming. And the anxiety was whisking and whipping his stomach into a frosting. Lance trailed his hands to Keith’s neck and ducked his head into the knight’s shoulder.

“And you’re not answering,” Keith quipped back, still battling his nerves down. Like stuffing more trash into a trash can that was already far past full, he stuffed his negative emotions down into his gut. “You’re allowed to say no.” His voice had dipped into a whisper now. Lance lifted his head from Keith’s shoulder quickly, whipping his head one way and then the other. His fingers climbed Keith’s neck to nestle in his hair and pull him forward a little desperately and he sniffed loudly.

“No! I’m not going to say no!” He swung forward to knock their foreheads together and Keith wrinkled his nose at how cold Lance’s skin was. His free hand mindlessly went to tug his jacket more tightly around Lance’s shoulders and his mind went back to the possible hypothermia. “Of course I’m not gonna say no,” Lance breathed, yanking Keith back to what he was saying. “I just thought you were mad at me or something and that’s why you were being so… so off. I’m kinda still overwhelmed because I didn’t think you were gonna-- _I’m_ the romantic one, asshole!” Keith smiled at how Lance’s cheeks had gotten just slightly warmer, though not from his obsessive jacket fixing. “Yes. Obviously, yes, Keith.”

Keith felt the word _yes_ fan across the bridge of his nose and the rise of his cheekbones. Next time he felt a warm breeze, he was certain he’d think of this moment. He smelled the chocolate dessert from after lunch on the word. There was a part of him that knew he’d love chocolate forever because of that. He read it on Lance’s lips and he wanted to read it over and over for the rest of his life and he was sure he’d relive this every time he did. And the smile on those very same lips spelled its own word. Ecstatic. Or smitten. Or elated. Or just plain lovely. But best of all? The way the word _fiancé_ was scrawled right there in the wrinkles of his eyes and the curve of his grin and the red of his cheeks. Keith felt his heart melt and bubble to the top of his throat.

Lance had said yes, but Keith was still holding the ring and Lance had yet to tear his palms from Keith’s head and his fingers were still wrapped in his hair. Their foreheads were still atop each other and Keith could feel the icy water in Lance’s hair leaving smudges of dirt on his skin. He didn’t care, though, and even as he saw the same dirt on Lance’s lips, dripping and smearing along his smile, he still leaned that last inch forward. It was sloppy and more of smiling against one another than it was a kiss, but Keith found he didn’t particularly mind that either. He also wasn’t bothered by the ice of those purple lips. Because he was too filled with bliss and excitement to care about anything except that one word. _Yes._ And while Keith found it backwards, to kiss before he slipped the ring on, he didn’t complain.

Lance pulled back finally and Keith put the ring delicately—so, so gently, like it was made of dried leaves or cracking clay, like it could split in half and so could Lance—on his finger. And then Keith squeezed his hand and Lance pressed another kiss to his lips in answer. He grinned, letting his back fall so he was laying in the mud instead of just sitting in it. Keith was drawn along, too, and he let his nose bump into Lance’s as he crumpled forward. “I was gonna, too,” the brunet admitted, his lips buzzing against Keith’s as he spoke. “Propose, I mean. I asked Shiro for help, but I guess you’re just faster than me.” Keith was peeling strands of hair away from his face one by one as he listened, hardly able to keep from crushing down on his fiancé with just one hand. Not that he was complaining. It was worth it to see Lance nudge his head up into each of Keith’s touches. “Or just more impulsive, Mr. I-chose-to-propose-right-after-my-boyfriend-almost-DIED.”

“You’re fine,” Keith said, rolling his eyes at the dramatic nickname. “And that’s fiancé, not boyfriend.” Lance smiled softly, forcing Keith’s one supporting arm out from under him so he could fall against his lips sweetly. Keith wedged his hands into the mud above Lance’s shoulders, but complied with the need for kisses. He hummed at the desperate cling of Lance’s hands to his shirt as he did. An addictive fire, Lance’s touches were. Though, if the pleased hum that rose from low in Lance’s chest was any indication, his touches were the same for Lance.

“Hell yeah, it is,” he breathed when they pulled apart. “I wanna love you forever, too.”

Keith had thought he looked extra gorgeous just then. Bangs knotted and parted awkwardly and wetly on his forehead, lips kissed from the shade of cold purple to the shade of tender pink, streaks of dirt on his cheeks, but eyes so brilliant and loving and locked perfectly on his own. Mud was clumped in his hair and likely ruining every stitch and every nook and cranny of every pocket of Keith’s prized jacket, but he looked so handsome while wreaking havoc. The sun in his eyes and glowing golden in his hair and on his cheeks. His lips, pulled so cutely into a grin of adoration. Looking at Lance made Keith feel both love and _loved_ and it was something he hoped he’d get to feel every day for the rest of his life.

And he did.

Gods, he did.

Even now, as Lance merely walked next to him in the forest—though forest had become less accurate a term with how sparse the trees now were—Keith felt it, that knowledge of both loving and being loved in equal measure. Lance’s presence there, at his left side, was enough to spark it. He watched the sunlight turn his hair golden and paint his skin a similar color and he said it again, on a whim. “I wanna love you forever, Lance.” The brunet turned to him at that, a little shock on his features at first, then just another grin of adoration. He lifted a steady palm to press to Keith’s cheek, the head knight placed his own atop it, and then Lance padded across the ground to stand in front of him. Keith had stopped walking and when Lance passed in front of him, his left hand went from atop the one on his cheek to sliding down the arm attached to it and resting along its shoulder. Then it slipped further to rest against the small of Lance’s back and the brunet curled into it, just slightly. It finally came to rest on his waist.

“What’s that for? We’ve been married for a while now, you don’t gotta,” Lance laughed a little and redirected his thought, “I mean, I should _hope_ you, my husband, wanna love me forever!” Keith nodded, dipping his head against Lance’s in one of his swings down and keeping it pressed there. Lance brought his chin up so he could peck Keith on the lips and Keith squeezed the hold he had on the soft flesh right above his hip. “But yeah, I wanna love you forever, too.” Those words brushed across Keith’s lips like that _yes_ had. Didn’t smell like chocolate, but it still left a sweet taste against the tongue he let sweep mindlessly across his lips. And a sweet sight for his eyes, since Lance had a tiny, cute curl to his lips and a new angle of light to paint gallery-worthy pieces of art against his cheeks. Dollops of shadows on his lips and cheeks and nose and the ridges of his brows. Like one of those paintings made entirely of collections of dots, there were flecks of shady blue on his skin and flecks of golden light in his eyes. The gold was like flowers or rows of wheat or the bright glow of a candle that bloomed in his eyes. His wide, round, but crinkled-at-the-edges eyes.

“I just want you to know,” Keith breathed back, hoping the feeling of his words made Lance as tipsy as that of Lance’s words made him. His free hand traveled to brush hair off of his husband’s shining features, pushing it back off his forehead, then he leaned forward to kiss the skin he’d just exposed. It was a tender action, but tender was all he could bear to be with him after what had happened a little while ago. After almost killing Lance, tender was what he needed, what they _both_ needed. And the brunet wasn’t complaining, anyway.

Keith was at a loss. He was lost in Lance’s lovestruck gaze and his words were drowning somewhere within that gaze, too. Maybe they were washed deep in the waves of his eyes or maybe they were slipped behind those smiling lips. Maybe they were tangled in the hair he just pushed back. Or maybe they’d settled in the pit of Keith’s stomach, knotted in his organs as he found his whole self locked onto Lance, stuck to him and his dizzying gaze. He was drunk off Lance and he was sure if he took a step closer, if he allowed himself the pleasure of the heat of Lance’s chest against his own, he’d teeter like a drunkard as he did. He’d teeter and sway and lose his senses to the desire to kiss up Lance’s neck and brush his nose against his collarbones and breathe his equally intoxicating scent. So, he didn’t step forward.

But Lance did and he took Keith’s hand from where it was lingering in his hair to cradle it within his own. Then, pushing his chest closer to Keith’s, he slung that hand over his shoulder so both his hands were free—when the other had left Keith’s cheek, the man was too dizzy to know—and he could push Keith’s hair back from his temples and lift it away from his neck. He kissed the column of his neck, the bump at the front of it, and he knocked his head against Keith’s chin as he pulled back. “You’re alright,” he muttered, kissing the chin he hit and making Keith grip his waist at the heat of Lance’s breath against him. “You didn’t hurt me,” he added. Keith figured the reassurance meant he was still wearing his guilt from the attack in his eyes. Or that Lance misinterpreted the tenderness in his actions as something other than the pure adoration it was. “You’re not gonna hurt me.” Or maybe he’d taken the declaration of wanting to love him forever as an apology. Maybe that’s what it was. Keith found it didn’t matter as he turned to melted wax under Lance’s whispered comfort; it could be whatever Lance wanted, as long as Lance felt safe with him.

He hummed a shallow noise, just from the top of his chest, and he pressed forward to kiss Lance again. “I know,” he said before he did. A few seconds there, against the heat of his lips and kissing the alcohol of his taste, and then he’d been lost all over again. No longer in the look of him, but in the feel of him. The feel of him under his tongue as he deepened the kiss a little. The feel of him against his chest when he hummed and the sound shook him to the core from where they touched along their torsos. The feel of him softening like butter from the warmth of everything Keith was doing, melting under his lips and caving under his hot fingers scribbling circles against his waist. The feel of him attempting to give Keith permission to find himself within the heat of his mouth, but ending up giving him permission to lose himself there instead.

The head knight knew they should be moving forward, keeping their march steady so they would be sure to make it to Lance’s home as quickly as possible, but he wanted to _press_ forward instead. Press his lips forward, against Lance’s, against his neck, against his loosening jaw. He did, after folding the cloth of Lance’s turtleneck undershirt back, and Lance very nearly fell away from his grip at it. “Oh, Gods,” he sighed, pressing forward as well to get his chest to meet Keith’s as much as possible. Keith smiled against his neck. “You shouldn’t,” a shaky breath under a longer, open mouthed kiss to his throat, “Keith, we should keep moving. The queen expects us to.” Keith grunted, content with staying right where he was.

“Since when are you an avid rule follower?” Keith wondered if Lance’s leather armor was malleable enough to pull back so he could kiss more of him. He decided he liked his hands where they were, tight against Lance’s waist, so he elected not to try. He trailed kisses to the scar on Lance’s neck. Lance went rigid and his hands slid to Keith’s shoulders, gripping tightly. With a slight push to his shoulders, the knight easily came off where he’d latched himself with kisses. He’d found the stiffness of Lance’s form odd, but the push was something he understood. Damn, his husband had sobered and he was back to focusing on their mission.

“C’mon, I don’t really wanna be here when it gets dark. Unlike _you,_ ” he jutted a thumb in Keith’s direction with a smile, “I can’t see in the dark.” Choosing not to show his fleeting, devious thoughts on his face—being able to see when Lance couldn’t would be an excellent prank opportunity, after all—the head knight allowed himself to be nudged farther back. Still would have preferred to remain nestled with his lips to his husband’s skin, but Lance was right; they needed to keep moving. How unlike his prankster of a husband to be the responsible one. “So, let’s get movin’! We’ve got a very special family to see!” Keith watched his husband turn on his heel, felt him slip his hand into his own, and savored both of the events. “You still excited?”

Lance had made it a pace or two ahead of Keith now and he’d stepped out of the cover of some tree, into a patch of light brighter than where Keith stood, and he looked back again. As if to encourage an answer, he smiled. The light caught on his cheeks as he pushed them up to collect around his eyes. His right hand, the one unoccupied by Keith’s, swept through his hair just as Keith made his step into that patch of light after him and the sun caught on that hair same as it did Keith’s eyelashes; he squinted. He spotted the gold of Lance’s wedding ring and how it blended with the glint of sunlight along his normally chestnut locks. The knight’s heart swelled and he turned his gaze down to their joined hands, the shine of the ring on his hand bringing his thoughts back to Lance. He gave a squeeze and turned back up.

Lance still looked vibrant; he was still shining. His skin and his hair and his eyes and all of him was a sketch drawn with liquid gold, a pile of sunflower petals strewn about Keith’s line of sight. The man was all sharp edges made up of different shades of yellow in this lighting. Keith was warmed by every single one of those shades. He felt his lips go numb into a dopey, smitten smile. Lance shot a confused one back, forward pace bringing him into another shadow and painting him in watercolors instead of gold. Soft, mellow, blue was thrown across his skin like a spilled tub of paint. Keith kept smiling at this coloring, too.

He read his name on Lance’s smile more than he heard him speak it and he saw the confusion drawn into the curve of his brows. Finally remembering he’d been asked a question, he pondered its answer. The warmth deep in his gut, the calmness in his chest, and the overall serenity filling his ears in the form of a steady heartbeat all spoke an affirmative response. He’d forgotten the question, but for Lance, he’d say yes without hesitation. Closing the gap of only about a step between Lance’s march and his own, he spoke. “Of course.”

Though he’d forgotten what Lance had asked, the answer was always yes for him.

...

Well, he supposed not always.

Because if Lance asked him one specific thing, no matter how compelling the lie would be, no matter how much he’d want to believe it himself, he wouldn’t be able to speak that one simple and affirmative answer.

He could only hope Lance wouldn’t ask.

_“Am I safe?”_ Keith could hear that question in his head, ringing in Lance’s voice. He could see his husband’s crying eyes, like when the brunet awoke from a nightmare, pleading for Keith’s comfort. He could see the tears dribbling down his lips and he could see that water morphing into a liquid far more disturbing and far more crimson. His stomach felt like it was being twisted with a wrench. With that violent mangling to Keith’s gut, his nerves returned with a desire for vengeance. In Keith’s head, the imagined question was dripping from Lance’s bleeding lips. And no answer to it came to mind.

After all, how could Keith ever say yes to the question of Lance’s safety when he _knew_ someone was out there trying to kill his husband?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all, about my updates: (to the tune of Moto Moto) I like 'em big... I like 'em chunky *points at word count* ... I like 'em really inconsistently timed because the author has too much anxiety to say no to being called into work unexpectedly
> 
> nah tho. I need the money, I ain't complainin' too much
> 
> Let me know if you do like my big and chunky update in the comments below tho ;)


	5. I Feel Like I'm Going to Lose You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all: It's, like, two hours after the one week mark! What took you so long?!  
> Me, closing 300 tabs of Goose the cat on my computer: uhh... important work came up...
> 
> I'm honestly exhausted? This chapter is thicc (12,640 words let me dIE)... Kind of an emotional roller coaster, too... so buckle up, kiddos

It was getting hot. Really hot. Like boiling water on the back of his neck, hot. Like billowing steam against his lips every time he breathed in, hot. Like peel his skin off just for one less layer to trap heat, hot. Keith wasn’t sure how the climate was changing as fast as it was, but it most certainly was and he motivated himself to keep pressing on primarily by looking forward to the shade of each tree as he passed under it. Those trees were few and far in between since they’d left the forest, though, and their trunks were skinny and their leaves sparse, so they never satisfied his need to get away from the sun. His armor was scalding his skin, like the iron had turned molten and was seeping through his undershirt to nip at his chest and shoulders. 

Dragging a hand through his sweaty hair, he puffed his chest in a deep breath. The hot air was so overwhelmingly warm it felt almost liquid in his windpipe as it passed. He locked his gaze onto the next tree, onto his salvation, then made the sprint there. His feet kicked up dirt, sending it in dusty clouds around him, and his footprints were mostly just smears in vaguely foot-like shapes from how sloppily he was running. He didn’t care that the samples strapped to his hip were clinking haphazardly against one another as he ran; he was that desperate to get out of the heat. When he made it to the tiny patch of shade, his palm cupped the green trunk and he ducked his head to pant down against his collarbones. His cheeks were flushed and his ears were sunburnt; both were extremely easy to feel, since they ached in an impossible to ignore way. Yet, when Lance came meandering up to the tree Keith had snuck under, the man’s skin was entirely normal. A few beads of sweat on his upper lip and some askew parts in his hair where he’d shot his hand through once or twice, but otherwise, he was as immaculate as always. 

“Fuck you,” Keith huffed none too seriously, though obviously disgruntled. He made sure Lance picked up on the jest in his tone. Lance placed his hand a few inches higher than Keith’s on the trunk of the tree they were sharing shade under and his other hand swept up to scoop up the sweat on Keith’s hairline with the pad of his index finger. Despite appreciating the tenderness behind the action, Keith scoffed again to himself. “I shouldn’t have worn all my armor.” Lance gave a silent laugh, the kind with only a puff of air to alert Keith of the humor in his expression. 

“Wanna switch?” The brunet gestured to his leather armor, then began to comb through Keith’s hair again. He didn’t seem to like how sloppily the knight had trudged his fingers through it and how it was knotted at the ends now. When that was done, he gave his own huff and began to shuffle the bag on his back by jostling the straps over his shoulders—he’d elected to be the one to carry their supplies before, when Keith had first started to complain about the heat. Reconsidering his offer to switch armor, though, he said, “I mean, I doubt all those rippling muscles of yours,” he poked the bit of Keith’s undershirt-covered bicep right past the end of his shoulder armor to accentuate the statement, “would fit in my tiny, little armor. But you can try.” Keith scoffed as his eyebrow rose on his face.

“You’re by no standards tiny, Lance.” He gave a poke, similar to Lance’s earlier, to the swell of muscles on his upper arm. Not as big as Keith’s—he didn’t swing a sword every day, so not all that surprising—but still, nowhere near  _ tiny.  _ “But you’re right,” he said, letting his hand go back to messing up the hair Lance had just fixed. The brunet screeched quietly to himself at all his effort falling away. “I probably wouldn’t fit.” Grinning, he smacked the front of his armor so it rattled and so it lifted off his back for a moment, giving him half a second of relief from the heat of it. “Maybe you wanna stuff my armor in the supply bag?”

“Gods, please no.” Lance stepped back defensively, one hand going to the strap of his bag, the other acting as a wall between him and Keith. “I’d sooner die.” Keith tried not to let the reality of that exclamation get to him; he knew Lance hadn’t meant anything by his mention of death. Keith focused on the way Lance brought his eyebrows down to his eyes so he could level a stern gaze with Keith. He jutted his bottom lip out same as he jutted an angry finger out in a stiff point and the picture those actions painted kept the theme of Keith’s original jest. “One person gets the heavy armor and one gets the supplies, remember?”

Keith hummed a relatively frustrated sounding noise. He supposed he was lucky for only having to carry the two samples, his sword, and a loose dagger on his waist somewhere. “Yeah,” he answered simply, before turning his head to the palms of his hands and all the sweat they’d accumulated since the forest had ended. He stretched his fingers out, then curled them back in toward the crevices of his hands in which all his sweat had pooled. The skin stuck together awkwardly and he cringed. Swiping his sweaty skin over the fabric on each of his arms, he faced Lance again. His husband was squinting out towards where they needed to go, his eyelashes fluttering as if to bat away the incoming rays of sunlight. The sun had dipped fairly low by now and Keith knew Lance wanted to make it out past the river they needed to cross before nightfall, so he begrudgingly pushed off his tree trunk. “Wanna keep moving?” 

“Want isn’t really the right word,” Lance mused, shifting the bag on his back again. There was a nose wrinkling crack in his shoulder as he did. Keith noticed how the bag was almost half the size Lance was with a frown; that couldn’t be good for his spine. “But yeah, we should keep moving.” Keith almost felt like he ought to carry the bag, despite the earlier deal of splitting the weight of their belongings relatively evenly. He knew such a decision would be entirely disadvantageous—he wouldn’t be able to walk much, let alone use a sword well, with all that extra weight—and yet seeing Lance wince like that every time he shifted his spine the wrong way had him longing to discard any semblance of responsible strategy. After all, if someone was after Lance, which all things seemed to indicate was the case, Lance couldn’t afford to be hindered by such a heavy bag on his shoulders. Then again, Keith couldn’t afford that either because someone needed to have his husband’s back. His heart pounded as he internally asked himself what the solution was, what they could possibly do. “Keith?”

The panic rising in Keith’s throat stopped its ascension and settled in a lump at the back of his tongue. 

His husband had left the shade of the tree and turned back around to question why Keith hadn’t. His expression was patient, but the question was still scribbled in his eyes. The head knight didn’t really have an answer other than to explain his momentary panic, so he merely stepped out into the sun to join him. “Sorry.” His hand rose up to flatten across Lance’s shoulder as he passed him and Lance faced forward again to join his pace after it left. There was a rattle of something metal in the bag and Keith knew his husband had shifted it again. It sounded again as Lance’s hand came into his peripheral vision. It was there only a moment before he felt Lance’s fingers slip behind his ear to tuck his hair in place. 

“You’re worried, aren’t you?” Keith scrunched his nose for only a split second, but Lance spotted the twitch and it was enough for the brunet to know he was right. Even so, Keith brought his shoulders up in a shrug. “What for?” Keith was suddenly finding the noise of his armor crashing as he walked more intriguing than his husband’s inquiries because he felt out of place answering them. Not that Lance didn’t have a right to know, but it felt wrong to complain about being worried for Lance’s safety to Lance himself. And it wasn’t that he thought his husband was weak, because he  _ wasn’t _ and Keith was observant enough to realize that, but their enemies appeared to be capable, too. Competent with spells that could conjure an enemy—Keith, for example—that Lance couldn’t,  _ wouldn’t _ , hurt. So, what was he supposed to say?

“Someone’s trying to kill you,” he decided to utter. That was the mere surface of the issue, but it was better than no answer. 

“Nah.” Lance’s hand went from behind Keith’s ear to sliding around his neck, until it rested on his other shoulder. It was hardly soothing to have his husband’s arm slung around his shoulder like that because, with the sun as hot as it was, his body heat was smothering. Lance was certainly aware, but his heat and his weight remained firmly about Keith’s shoulders. “We don’t need to worry. They clearly aren’t too strong since they stooped to mind control as their form of attack.” Valid as that point was, as right as he could have been, it still didn’t provide Keith with much comfort. “And that won’t work anymore because you’re too much of a badass to let it happen again!” An inkling of a smile passed Keith’s features and Lance’s head came down to rest on his shoulder armor. Perhaps there was a bit of comfort in his closeness, even with the heat. “And let’s say I’m wrong—I know, it’s insane—but let’s say I’m wrong. If the enemy  _ is _ super tough, I’m more than capable of handling myself.” Lance slunk back and as he fell into a place beside Keith, he lifted a finger to zap a small electricity spell against Keith’s cheek as emphasis. 

“I know you are.” And he was,  _ he was strong enough, _ but that hadn’t stopped Lotor before. It hadn’t stopped Haggar. There were ways to completely strip him of his strength, to make him entirely defenseless, and Keith knew that. “But I’m still going to worry about you.” Keith tangled his hands into knots in front of his stomach, digging his nails into the skin across the back of his hands and scraping his knuckles. He winced, but his eyes remained glued to his hands and the dents he was leaving along them. His teeth tugged at his bottom lip, until Lance bumped his hip with Keith’s during his next step and Keith turned to look at his face. It was still patient, still calm. 

“Okay, okay. You’re allowed to be a stupid worrywart.” Keith was about to face forward again, but Lance reached a hand up to pinch one of his cheeks. “On one condition!” He tugged the bit of cheek in his hold upwards and the end of Keith’s lips went up with it, too. Though the makeshift smile was entirely involuntary. “You gotta do it smiling because my little cousins are gonna be scared of you otherwise!” His grip on Keith’s face loosened and Keith stopped wringing his hands. “And, well, I gotta be allowed to worry about you, too, okay?”

“That’s actually two conditions,” Keith replied. Lance tightened his pinch again and tugged it. With a laugh, Keith finally agreed. “Okay, fine, I’ll smile more.” 

It was kind of a stupid promise. If he wasn’t worrying about an enemy attack, he was worrying about possible heat exhaustion or those creatures Lance’s village had recently been reported to have  _ mostly _ wiped out. With so many things to worry about, it was hard to force a smile to his lips. He found it hard to smile when Lance would shuffle his bag and his spine would crack loudly. He found it hard to smile when he felt the start of a sunburn on his cheeks. He found it hard to smile when he spotted Lance slipping his last water bottle out of the bag and lifting it to his lips, only to find it empty with a whine. He found it hard to smile when he had begun to count less and less palo verdes along their trek, less and less sources of shade. 

But at least he had Lance.

The man was finding little things to distract himself into smiling and watching him do those things fueled Keith with a little reason to smile back. The mage kicked the dried out shells of cicadas and crunched the leafless bushes they passed under his boot. A few times, he’d run ahead a couple meters to have time to scribble in the dust with his toe. At some point, he’d realized Keith was paying attention to what he was doing up ahead, so he had begun to write messages for Keith in the dirt. 

_ Your hair is ugly. _

Keith laughed as he read it and Lance looked proudly up at him, as though the sloppy message was a fantastic piece of artwork worthy of being in a museum. Keith figured at least his cute expression upon hearing him laugh was worthy of that museum status. His open mouthed grin, his wrinkled eyes, the gold of the almost-sunset on his lips, and the outline of milky gold along his chin like a glowing cup of creamy coffee were all art. His silvery scar above his eyebrow had moved up a place, it seemed, because it had turned as gold as the sun. His blue, blue eyes shone and twinkled too easily. Yeah, some part of  _ that _ piece of artwork belonged in a museum alright. Maybe all of it did. 

It was his turn to run ahead now, to send a smug response. His armor kicked up clouds of dirt that made Lance cough—though maybe he was laughing at Keith’s eagerness, actually—and once he was a fair distance ahead, he wrote his message back. It was even sloppier than Lance’s message, since his boots were heavy and it was hard to lift his toe from the dust as a result, but it ended up being legible and he stood proudly next to it as Lance caught up at his own leisurely pace. 

_ You seemed to love it the other night. _

He watched Lance read it. He watched Lance continue to stare at it after he’d read it. His cheeks got red and it couldn’t even be attributed to the glowering sun. Then he watched him drag his boot through it with an indignant squawk. “That’s slander!” He shoved his heel against the offending words with more fervor and his hand went out to smack along Keith’s chest plate. “There could be kids out here to read this, Keith! You’re a villain!” The villain in question was laughing now, rocking his head back in the motion of it, and his hand reached out to scoop the side of Lance’s face. Still laughing, he brushed his thumb along his cheekbone gently and he murmured an insincere apology through his stifled chuckling. “You’re insufferable,” the brunet breathed. Then he was running ahead again and tracing more words into the dirt. He drew with his foot at first, then he seemingly got frustrated and bent over to scrape words with his finger. Upon the completion of his message, he stood up with an expression that was uncharacteristically hard to read. Keith walked at his normal, casual pace until he got there, upon which he bent his spine to read it. 

_ But I guess I do love it.  _

A few spaces where he’d clearly scribbled out what he’d attempted to draw, then a shaky heart. And with a couple more steps, Keith found the message continued.

_ And you. _

Keith smiled, genuinely, fully, before he reached out again to cup the soft sides of Lance’s face with both his hands. Pitching forward, he pressed his lips to Lance’s nose. “I love you, too.” His husband wrinkled his nose at the contact, but his eyes wrinkled, too, and Keith knew he appreciated it. Keith appreciated it as well. He wasn’t quite sure if Lance had meant to cheer him up or if it was just his natural way of existing. If his affectionate words stemmed from an intention of brightening his expression or if he really, truly just had that much kindness brewing inside him and spilling over onto those around him. Keith had been so obviously worried about Lance’s safety, though, it was completely possible Lance had written his messages as a distraction for Keith. Either way, Keith felt a lot more at ease and the heat of the desert no longer felt so smothering. 

It was about an hour after that when the sun finally began to truly set. Keith squinted through it, but every now and then, when he got too far ahead of his husband, Lance would make an exaggerated screech, sprint to catch up, and slap his hands over parts of Keith’s armor while complaining about a reflection. As bad as the knight felt, he couldn’t do much about the sunlight on his armor and how it shined in Lance’s eyes and all he could do was will nightfall to come faster. Needless to say, that didn’t happen; the sun kept falling at its slow pace. Luckily, not too long after the sun began to set, that river they needed to cross rose up along the horizon. Shouting about how thirsty he was, Lance darted towards it immediately. Keith was just as parched, but he didn’t have the energy to keep up with Lance’s hastened speed, so he kept an eye on his husband, but made no effort to catch up. 

The river turned out not to be too far and before Keith could worry about Lance being dangerously distant, the brunet had made it to the water’s edge and tossed his bag onto the ground there. The plantlife around the river was flourishing; they were the only plants in the desert—as that appeared to be what the barren landscape had become—capable of getting a steady source of water. The trees had thicker trunks and brightly colored leaves, there was grass along the banks of the river, and when Keith finally caught up entirely, he even spotted small, yellow flowers and dandelions dotting the grass. The grass didn’t crunch beneath his feet, either, and he settled and stood in the shade of one of the many trees for a minute, observing his surroundings as he did. While the plantlife only gave small movements and sways in the wind, he noted the river itself was roaring with its ferocity and speed. There were a few rocks in the river and the water hit them and parted into streams of spraying waves and mist. 

Hardly able to hear his own thoughts over the sound of gushing water, Keith watched his husband kneel next to the river’s edge and knead the grass there for a moment. He then shook his hands in the river, as though to clean them, before curving them and bringing a few handfuls of, likely unsafe, water to his lips to drink. Keith feared he might fall in without any grip of his fists on solid land, so the knight moved over to snatch the back of his leather armor and to keep him from tumbling in. Lance seemingly thought nothing of the action and kept slurping from his cupped palms. When he’d apparently gotten his bellyful, he scooped one more makeshift-bowl’s worth and swivelled his spine to lift it to Keith. It had almost fully spilled all over his face, chest, and lap by the time his hands made it even remotely close to Keith’s lips. He laughed and the knight joined him after the brunet said, “I guess you could say this water’s getting out of hand.”

The roots of Lance’s hair were wet with sweat from all their walking into the setting sun and the ends of his bangs were wet with all the water he’d just spilled on himself. A few droplets were caught in the dip on his face between the inner corner of his eye and his nose, a few more stuck in the crevice between the end of his nose and his cheek, and just a couple pooling along the faint part in his lips and the drier-than-usual skin there. His upper lip—and the cute cupid’s bow there that made Keith weak in the knees, even after being married this long—was wet, too. A drop of river water fell from what of it that had collected on his eyebrow and Lance fluttered his lashes when it fell atop them. Keith felt even thirstier now.

But he denied himself the pleasure of drinking in Lance’s soaked form any longer and instead knelt on the grass and over the water next to him. He took a few hearty gulps before he and Lance finally began to discuss how they were going to get across the river. Lance threw the bag off his back and stuffed himself into a position sitting under a tree as they talked. With the shade over Lance’s face, Keith finally noticed the moons of black under his eyes. He shot a look at the river with a silent wish radiating in his mind; he hoped their travelling across it wouldn’t take too long, if for no other reason than to finally allow Lance a chance to rest. If he wasn’t mistaken, this was his husband’s first big mission since being certified and he was probably exhausted from it all.

“You should cross first,” Lance murmured, rubbing two fingers under one of his tired eyes. His tongue swept across his bottom lip and his hand came up to grasp his chin in a smug manner. “Believe it or not, I’m actually a really good swimmer. I could cross this river unconscious!” Keith believed it, especially knowing now that the river Lance had always talked about learning to swim in was the rapid one Keith was currently next to and straining to hear his husband over. “So, you go first, that way I can jump in after you if something goes wrong.” Keith opened his mouth with a disgruntled reply rising from his gut—because who said something would go wrong when  _ he _ swam across and not when Lance did—but Lance stood up and reached out to pat the top of Keith’s head. “Not that anything’s gonna go wrong, babe.” The knight crossed his arms over his chest, but agreed.

“Do you want to send the bag over to me before you swim across?” Lance tested the weight of it again with a tug to its handle, but the bag barely lifted an inch or so off the dirt before his shoulder popped. Yelping at the shock of it, he still managed a shake of his head.

“Nah, it might get carried downstream if we do that. I can just bring it across with me.” He brought his arms over his chest, unknowingly mirroring Keith’s stance, and he visibly and audibly thought. “I could walk facing the incoming water and hold it in front of me to keep it from being dragged downstream?” He shook his head. “No, I should keep it on my back and face downstream so I don’t get water in my face.” Keith pretended to understand the logic behind that, but he wasn’t really listening as much as he was worrying. He didn’t like the idea of Lance carrying all that extra weight across, alleged good swimmer or not. Even so, he took his assigned role with grace and stepped towards the edge of the river. 

Damning that old rule about keeping his armor dry to protect from rust, he let the first foot fall in and winced as it sent water splashing up and onto his cheeks. He swore the waves had a hand on his ankle and were tugging his foot out from under him and he could hardly get enough balance to lift his other foot long enough to get it into the river as well. Once he did, he still felt seconds away from being dragged off. Shooting a glance back at his strategizing husband, he wondered if Lance would abandon their supplies and carry  _ him _ across instead because he was suddenly positive Lance’s idea of something going wrong was completely solid and ascertained. He could take trips, couldn’t he? One for Keith, one for the supplies? He noticed Lance rub at his unfocused eyes again and Keith frowned when he shook his head as though trying to wake himself up. Facing forward once more, Keith willed his ankles to be steady. No, it would have been selfish of him to ask Lance to cross the river not once, but  _ three times. _ He was going to make it across just fine on his own. There wasn’t any other way. And thus another footfall crashed into the pebbles and dirt at the bottom of the river.

His steps were shaky and slow and his nerves tasted just as foul in his mouth as the occasional splash of water that got in there—no longer being on the cusp of dehydration meant his choice in water was far more refined than it had been earlier. By the time he was waist deep, he’d gotten a decent understanding of the pattern in crossing. He’d take a step, he’d steady himself, then he’d slowly take another. He tended to lead with the same leg each time so he had less distance to trudge his legs through each time he moved forward. It slowed his overall speed, but it tired out his muscles far less. 

It was hard to tell which was louder now; was it his own heart beat or the crashing of the river against the nearby rocks? If a stream in a forest was called a babbling brook, he figured this was a screaming one, since it was overwhelmingly noisy. Loud, loud, loud, against his eardrums. And it was so  _ fast. _ It never slowed down, it never eased up, and it was unbearably harsh against his armor constantly. He was lucky his armor was loose enough for the water to rush in one side and out the other because if it had been closed on one end, it would have filled up like a cup within seconds and he would have caught on the extra weight like an umbrella in the wind; he would have been launched downstream before he had a chance to ask his husband for help. 

Speaking of, he chanced another look back at the brunet on the river bank. Said man spotted Keith looking his way instantaneously and he gave a thumbs up with one hand and a wave with the other. Lance had worried his hair into disarray and, even as he gave his motivational hand motions, his bottom lip remained firmly between his teeth. In his turn back to ahead of him, Keith’s foot slipped and, since he hadn’t yet faced completely forward again, he saw Lance’s breath catch and his foot swing forward. The knight managed to right himself before he fell, but he heard the cry of his name from the shore, just barely over the wails of the rushing water. Good to know Lance was paying attention, at least.

By the halfway mark, he was chest deep in the river and his mouth was given a water-oxygen intake ratio of four to one. He swore he was nearly aquatic by the time the water began to get shallower. While still a struggle, the walk after that point was the final stretch and easier to motivate himself through as a result. His heart thrummed with the prospect of his swim finally being over and no longer did it crash against his ribcage with nerves. When his heel dug into the dirt of dry land again, he gave an audible shout of excitement. He heard Lance give a similar whoop on the other side of the river, though what the words of the noise had been were indiscernible over the screeching of the river. Keith threw himself to the ground to catch his breath.

He wasn’t afforded much time to rest, though, before he knew he had to watch Lance. He didn’t know quite what he’d do if Lance, the better swimmer of the two, got his feet knocked out from under him, but he figured he ought to watch anyway. Just in case. Nothing would go wrong. He reminded himself of Lance’s promise of such, the stern resolve in his eyes as he’d said it, and the softness of his reassuring smile. And yet, as Keith was sitting upright in the puddle of mud he’d created for himself by emptying his armor’s water contents onto the dirt, something about such a promise didn’t sit right in his stomach. Not that Lance had spoken it oddly or insincerely, but the knight suddenly found himself feeling like something about Lance’s trek across the river was different. Was  _ off.  _

He watched Lance drag their supply bag to the shore, before placing his first foot in. Same as when Keith took his first step, he almost had his ankle yanked out from under him, but differently than Keith, he recovered far more quickly and his second foot was in the water not too long after. Then the bag was tugged in. It wasn’t  _ light _ in any sense of the word, but it must not have been dense, at least, because it floated on the river. As per Lance’s plan, he swung the straps onto his shoulders so the bag remained on his backside, then he faced downstream and the water seemed to part around his back and the heavy bag upon it, before rejoining on the other side of his torso. Lance was the size of one of the river’s many rocks and the waves were crashing against him and splitting around him accordingly. 

There was a branch hanging over where Lance decided to enter the river. It provided very minimal shade, but Keith figured that was tolerable, given how cold the water was when he crossed; the sun wasn’t a threat with icy water rising up around Lance’s calves. Keith folded a leg up so he could rest an elbow on his knee. The sun was hot along his spine, a dancing wave of fire each time a gust of wind breathed against him, and he was finally grateful for its warmth, since he’d been thoroughly frozen from crossing the river. He relaxed and watched Lance take another slow step. 

There was a fairly steady splash against his cheek as water gushed around him and slapped up his sides. His cheeks were dotted with the shadows of the leaves above him, though likely not for long, since the branch of the tree a little way ashore didn’t seem to extend that far into the river. It was spring, so every now and then a flower from a tree farther upstream would come rushing down and catch on their supply bag. One even fell atop it from that lonely branch over Lance. Keith looked to its source when it did. A palo verde tree, by the looks of it, but far bigger than any he’d ever seen. Its flowers were in full bloom and more were shaking and falling off the longer he looked at it. That seemed off. Keith stood and tried to see through all the layers of leaves and flowers—once again, seemingly more than he’d ever seen, almost to the point of being unnatural. He wondered if maybe the soil around the tree was simply extremely fertile. He sidled one way, then the other, trying to see past the greenery on the tree because something about that branch wasn’t right. Too far over the water, until it looked almost topheavy. Too many leaves, until it looked almost like it was meant as a cover for something. That couldn’t be possible, could it? No one could specifically  _ make  _ a tree, just for that… could they?

Keith finally positioned himself just right to see past the blanket of flowers, twigs, and leaves. When he got a clear look, his heart jumped up his throat and his breath was punched out of his lungs with a sense of urgency to get to a state of panic. His heartbeat had gotten to an unbearable speed, to the point of making his hands shake enough to cause an earthquake, because behind those cursed leaves—the suspicious leaves he should have drawn attention to ages ago, he now knew—there was  _ someone. _ Someone Keith didn’t know, but someone Keith  _ knew _ wasn’t supposed to be there because no one lived out here by the river, no one climbed trees out here, and certainly anyone who did wasn’t someone who would loom over his husband with such clearly malicious intent carved into their features. Though, with more squinting, he could suppose this person was lacking in the features department.

No nose, no eyes, a mouth that was hardly capable of discerning an expression of any kind. 

Nonetheless, they had a tail wrapped around a branch and that was definitely somewhere it didn’t belong and he didn’t trust it for a moment. Curling his hands about his mouth, Keith shouted, fear thick and palpable in his tone, “Lance!” The brunet seemingly heard his name in the warning, but perhaps not the tone of it, as the only acknowledgment he gave of the call was to lift his arm and wave at Keith, then give a thumbs up. His nose turned back to the waves after that and Keith cursed quietly to himself. Lance had taken his shout as a cry of encouragement rather than fright. Though Keith didn’t really know what he would have told Lance to do anyway. Tell him to abandon the supplies so he could make it across faster, maybe. Supplies could be replaced, the bag could be retrieved downstream, they could make it a few nights empty handed and Keith still had the samples with him, so really, Lance could afford to let it go. Or maybe he should just turn and swim back to his side of the river because at least then, if he was on solid ground, he would be able to fight back against whatever spells the enemy on the branch was going to launch at him.

But no spells were being fired, upon further observation. Keith began to wring his hands, feeling nerves jitter up his spine and send needles all throughout his body. What were they planning? What were they doing? While his hands were squeezed like that, he squeezed his brain much the same way because  _ surely _ Lance would have taught him at least one attack spell he could knock the enemy off the branch with. He just had to remember it. Keith could remember so much from the lessons, but not what he needed.

He could remember the exact shade of blue Lance’s eyes had been when they darted over the pages of the spellbooks he was reading from. Dark and endless and vast and deep and, when they swept up, so full of adoration. Gods, no, Keith needed to think of something useful or he’d never be able to see that loving gaze after today. He shouted Lance’s name out again, but it seemed to shrivel up atop his tongue and he doubted it reached his husband. He focused on thinking of a spell once more, but now he could only remember the softness of Lance’s hands as he reshaped Keith’s to form the right position for a particular spell. The buttery smoothness of his gentle fingertips. And he could recall, that same learning session, he’d been particularly enamored with how Lance looked and he’d found himself wanting to run his hands through his hair. Gods! Gods, he needed to focus, he needed to think of something of value because he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if his husband died because he was already cherishing the soft, everyday memories they had and he couldn’t think of something to save him as a result. He cursed as he thought he might have spent so long thinking and mourning and missing like he was already a widow that he would actually end up becoming one. 

Focus, focus!

But still nothing was coming to mind, no attack spells were in his repertoire of knowledge. Perhaps Lance had only taught him healing spells after all. He gave up on that and he swung a leg towards the bank of the river so his boot splashed in the waves and so his armor began to feel like ice once more. “Lance!” He waved an arm at his husband, but he was too far into the river it seemed, too focused on making it across, to hear or see him. Yanking a hand through his hair, Keith felt his breath get hotter against his tongue, like his anxiety was a pot of boiling water in his stomach that heated his every exhalation. “Lance,” his voice fizzed out halfway through, “Lance!” His warnings still went without reply or reaction and he was ready to leap into the river and cross back over to get his husband to look up. Now hellbent on heading back, his fingers went shakily to the straps of his chest plate so he could remove some of the extra weight and get across faster.

His eyes darted to that branch again with a scowl and he wondered why whoever sat perched atop it wasn’t launching any spells yet. He wondered with an odd uncertainty in his gut. The word  _ why _ was a buzzing storm in his ears, rattling him, but he couldn’t afford to focus on its thrumming. He couldn’t focus on anything else with it ringing, though; it was all he could hear. It blended with the rushing and groaning of the river until it all buzzed like a distracting white noise and he couldn’t think. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t hear anything and it was suffocating; all the noise was like a noose for his ears. He couldn’t make out anything above the  _ why, why, why _ in his brain. 

Until he could.

A creak, like a sizzling noise he could somehow pick out from under the fog of all that other noise, that was what he could hear. Or maybe he imagined it based off of what he was seeing. Lance wasn’t out from under the branch and it was bending, curling, and teetering towards snapping completely in half. The brunet still didn’t look up, though; his eyes were locked onto the expanse of water he had to traverse in each individual step. He took one, still at least five more away from being out from under the branch and Keith cursed his cautious approach to his crossing. The knight began to fumble with his armor far more quickly and far less efficiently, desperation painting each of his movements. His eyes weren’t on his trembling fingers, so his attempts were sloppy. That gaze that should have been on his hands was glued to the person on the branch. He swore, if they had the ability to look him in the eyes and smile devilishly, that’s what they would have done. The rattle of his armor was all he could hear, until something broke that mindless sound, too.

Loud and clear and sharp, a single crack cut through all the white noise and after, it seemed like everything other than the clap had silenced. It wasn’t even a second, barely enough time to blink, but it felt like the crack echoed in his eardrums for hours; he swore he’d hear that heavy wood snapping for eternity. Something in Keith broke in two at the same time as the branch—his ability to think intelligibly and reasonably, perhaps—and he lost all semblance of strategy and leapt forward with all his armor still clinging to his form. Lance’s attention had been caught by the noise as well and his head finally lifted from the river rising and slapping about his waist. His chest visibly stuttered as he took in a shocked breath and sputtered it back out in a way Keith could hear in his imagination. 

He couldn’t have made it out of the way in time. It was impossible. Keith prayed he would regardless, but it was all Lance could do to get a pair of arms over his skull before it hit. There might have been a noise then, but Keith wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the way he had screamed. There was definitely a sound when both Lance and the branch hit the river, but Keith was shouting over that, too, because Lance had hit the water face first. Face first. Face first, mouth under. Face first, mouth under, nose under. No way to breathe. Keith lost the air in his lungs as well and he waited for Lance to lift his head from the waves. He counted the seconds—probably counted far more than the number of seconds that actually passed, considering how askew time was in his brain. He counted three, five, ten seconds with Lance’s face still completely underwater and with his body being held down by both the tree limb and the supply bag. 

He wasn’t getting up. His arms were limp about his body. He wasn’t even making an effort to move, to force the branch off, or to tangle his head free of all the extra weight. Gods, he wasn’t getting up. That fact was like a kick to the spine for Keith and he tumbled forward from the force of it. His ankles kicked up the water as he ran and he didn’t care how it splashed into his eyes, he didn’t care how it seeped in through openings in his armor and iced his skin, and he certainly didn’t care how that shot a shudder up his spine because none of that was what mattered. Lance couldn’t breathe. That was all that mattered. Getting Lance to breathe. 

It was a lot easier to trudge himself through the river this way than it had been going across before. With panic aching in his bones and muscles and beating in his heart, there was nothing left for the river to take away from him to slow him down. Except there was something it could take away and it was in the process of doing so, getting closer and closer with each second it kept Lance’s head out of reach of oxygen. It was also getting closer as it tugged Lance farther downstream because if Lance got farther, it would take Keith longer to catch up. Lance was moving too quickly now because he wasn’t fighting back against the current and as Keith felt the water climb to his waist again, he made the decision to do the same. With one last look to where the branch had been before it fell—a space that was now empty, since the form of the attacker could be seen sprinting away toward the horizon—he chose to let the current carry him same as it did Lance. It was more difficult for him, though, since he was the one making an effort to breathe. 

Lance had claimed to be a good swimmer, but Keith was far from it; he choked and sputtered on the water in his desperation to move faster than Lance. The branch was still hooked onto Lance or the supply bag somewhere and it was shaking leaves loose at a frustratingly quick pace that left Keith choking on them just as much as he was the water. He was holding his breath now, giving in with a head ducked beneath the waves every time he pumped his legs to get to Lance at a quicker rate. How long was too long underwater? How long did Keith have to get to him? Gods, was there anything in his brain about this? Did any of his knight training pertain to drowning? Four minutes until permanent brain damage, six minutes and the brain begins to die. Those were the numbers that came to mind, perhaps from a rotting part of his brain where he kept all of Shiro’s non-combat lessons. Four minutes was what he was aiming for. It had been maybe one by now. But Keith wasn’t sure. Maybe it had been more. His head was scrambled and whipped about, only capable of considering  _ Lance. _

The brunet was drifting towards the deepest part of the river, perhaps dragged by the strongest current. Keith had forgotten to take off his armor before jumping in and he sorely regretted it. The distance seemed to be growing and he needed it to shrink. Sickness crawled up his throat, like the water he was choking down was saltwater, because his all still didn’t seem to be enough. He was giving it everything he had, but Lance was drifting far too quickly for him to possibly reach. Gods, what could he possibly do? His leg muscles were burning; he couldn’t keep going at the same kicking pace he was currently at. But giving in wasn’t an option, either. What could he do, what could he  _ possibly _ do to catch up with Lance before it was too late?

Keith wanted to scream again, but it would have only been a gateway for more water to soak down his throat and choke him. He felt too hot and too cold; the water was frigid against his skin but his pulse was so fast his skin felt sweaty and clammy. Everything shook, including his line of vision, and he was finding it hard to keep sight of Lance through all the jostling of the waves and all the quaking of his heart beat. His head was underwater half the time, so he couldn’t see Lance then, and when it finally resurfaced, it shook about with each pounding splash of current against it, so his vision was blurry and shaky. And that was a description entirely too generous, especially when he took into account his hair flopping over in front of his eyes with each motion of his head, too. He could barely spot Lance like that and how was he going to catch up with something he could hardly even see?

How long had it been? Still only one minute? Two? Time was lost on him. He didn’t know numbers, he didn’t know how to count seconds, all he knew was Lance’s name and how far his husband was getting. Undoubtedly in the deepest part of the river now, Lance still hadn’t lifted his head from the waves. Keith didn’t believe he was even conscious to make the effort. He didn’t think he would be for too much longer, either, with the rate at which his own head was being tugged down underwater. It bursted up only for a long enough time to catch a breath and a glimpse of his husband, before it was forced back down like the waves were a hand on the back of his skull, dunking him in and out of the water. His head was buzzing and tugging him towards unconsciousness and he only remained awake through the pure willpower of needing to get to Lance before he drowned. If he hadn’t already.

Food rose up the back of his tongue at the thought.

He needed to move faster, faster, but he just  _ couldn’t. _ Lance was too far now; there was no way he’d ever get his speed up enough in time. This was it. With a few hundred feet of distance between them and while they were both moving at the same speed and driven by the same current, there was no way he’d make it. Keith’s eyes stung and his heart throbbed with them. The sun caught on his vision more with all the water pooling in his eyes, turning everything he could see into foggy, vague outlines. Lance turned the same. Lance and the supply bag and the branch. That  _ damn _ branch. Keith was going to take an axe to that  _ fucking _ branch as soon as he got the chance. 

A shame, considering it ended up being his salvation. 

Just as Keith surrendered himself to the idea of it all being over and hopeless, of losing Lance, the blurry outline of his husband began to get closer. And rapidly. Keith had to quickly dig his heels into the rocky bottom of the river to stop himself from whipping past his husband because that branch hooked to Lance and his bag had caught on a rock and pulled the whole mass to a stop. Keith, without hesitation, latched onto the same mass, his hands scratching for purchase against some pocket in the supply bag. His heels hadn’t been enough to stop him, but luckily three of his fingers caught on part of the bag and yanked him unceremoniously to a stop. His fingers cracked, but his attention was trained solely on Lance and the chance he’d been given. Two minutes, maybe. He was banking on it having been two minutes. He had time, he had time. He had to tell himself he did.

Water was gushing up Keith’s front as he faced upstream and the current crashed against him. He squinted through the waves of it and turned his eyes to what he could make out of Lance through the branch atop him. Catching a glimpse of the man’s hair, he reached his free hand through the twigs and leaves to grab at his head. He managed to lift it an inch or so from the surface of the water, but the brunet was too entangled in the tree limb to get any further. It had somehow wormed its way into being tightly wrapped in the supply bag’s straps along his back. “Fuck,” Keith hissed, releasing his hold on Lance’s head to tear at the tree branch with his one free hand. He tugged up, left, right, down, in every combination and order he could think of, but after about ten seconds, he shouted again. He didn’t have time for that. 

His free hand reaching for his waist, he felt around for the dagger he knew he had there somewhere. Upon feeling rounded metal in his palm, he yanked it out immediately and put it to the bag’s straps. Fuck, they were leather, but he wasn’t going to let that slow him down. Sawing hastily, he cut through one strap and the branch came free of the bag. The bag began to tear off down the stream, since it was no longer hooked to the branch and its rock, and Keith was almost yanked along with it, but his reflexes were fast enough to shift his hold from the supply bag to Lance before either could slip away. The bag kept riding the waves now that it was no longer within Keith’s grasp, though, and it did so with a momentum that tore the stitching out from the other strap so both were freed from Lance’s shoulders. 

Lance wasn’t tangled in anything anymore.

Keith remedied that by tangling his hand in the back of Lance’s armor for a sturdy grip. He started a hasty retreat to the closest river bank. Luckily, it was the side they wanted to end up on anyway. He cussed loudly to himself as he rushed back across and battled the current. He kept silently asking himself how long it had been.  _ No more than three minutes, no more than three, _ he repeated in his head. Three gave him time to get Lance to shore and breathing again before permanent brain damage began.

He got to shore  _ immensely _ faster this time than he had when he crossed before and he all but threw Lance onto land when he got there. Keith faintly recalled how it was completely possible Lance had received a head injury from the tree limb with a wince; he needed to be gentler. When he hauled himself ashore, he placed a wet finger above Lance’s lips in search for air. Nothing. He swore he’d ask for a brush up on CPR when he finally made it home because he’d hardly paid enough attention the first time, but for now he had to do what he could. Still sopping wet and with his hair dripping down onto Lance’s forehead, he bent over and pinched his husband’s nose. His other hand went to open his jaw, then he pressed their lips urgently together. He puffed once and pulled back. He didn’t know what he was expecting to happen, but Lance still wasn’t breathing on his own, so Keith gave another breath. 

“Lance, please,” he wheezed, shifting his position to land the heel of one palm against Lance’s chest and then to land the second hand atop the first. He let his whole body weight fall against them, then lift, then fall again. And again, and again, and again, and nothing was working. Gods, gods, Lance had taught him so many healing spells and yet there wasn’t a single spell for almost drowning? Nothing? Was there nothing he could do? Keith wanted to pound a fist into the ground in frustration, tug at his hair, claw down his cheeks, but his hands were still giving those monotonous compressions to no avail. “Lance,” he struggled past his lips, “Lance, you can’t leave me.” Keith’s hands trembled and wavered in their next compression, but they followed through their motion as they needed to. “You said you could swim, asshole,” he sputtered. Unable to wipe at the tears under his eyes, they fell, like the river water in his hair, against Lance’s uncharacteristically pale cheeks. His almost purple lips.

Keith hissed out a vulgar word.

On the first date he planned with Lance, his husband had been so stunning. The grey of the clouds above him, the shine of the lake behind him, and the rain on his cheeks had all made him look so perfect. The color of clear water in his eyes when he peered over the edge of the boat had made him seem so in his element. And when Keith had proposed by that very same lake, water still seemed to bring out the best in him. The drip of it down his soft skin, into the part of his lips, made him look so very kissable. The collection of it on the ends of his hair had him seeming so very at peace, at ease. The twinkle of his own water in his eyes as he nearly cried when Keith proposed made the knight want to pull him close and collect the dew on the ends of his fingers. He swore Lance gave water the magical power to be beautiful. 

But now,  _ now, _ with him unable to breathe because of that water, the gleam of it on his skin was downright painful. How could something that made him look so jaw dropping before take all the color from his skin and all the air from his lungs now? How could something that seemed to complete Lance before be his undoing now? It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t how it should have been. Lance was too young. It wasn’t right. 

“Shit,” Keith choked, pressing another desperate compression against his husband’s chest. “Fucking breathe, dammit!” The knight dipped forward to breathe into Lance’s mouth a few more times, but he was on the brink of giving up again. He’d come so far, he’d dragged Lance to land, but he still couldn’t get him to breathe and surely he was seconds from hitting the four minute mark. He could stretch it two more minutes after that, but if it wasn’t working now, it was unlikely it would work then and his wrists were at the edge of giving out. Lance wasn’t going to make it. Dipping his head down so his chin touched his collarbones and so his tears fell along Lance’s neck instead of his deathly face, Keith wailed to himself. 

And he sobbed so hard he almost missed it. The jerk of the chest beneath his hands. 

But when there came a twitch against the heel of his palm, he whipped his head up. 

Lance’s eyes were open.

Keith practically leapt back, tearing his hands from Lance’s chest and to his own—he could feel his heart thrumming and revving back to life under their touch. Lance hardly shot up, but he did roll to the side with a sputter that emptied his stomach’s contents onto the muddy ground. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes as he dry heaved and Keith’s eyes suffered the same predicament. The knight swung forward again to cup the back of Lance’s neck as his stomach kept lurching in its attempt to spew more of its last meal across the dirt. Keith threaded his fingers through the hair above Lance’s nape subconsciously and he grounded himself there. He could feel Lance’s pulse in his fingertips. His pulse. His heartbeat. His life. 

“Gods,” he murmured. “Oh, Lance.” His husband lifted his teary eyes from the mud, finally done with his ruthless retching, and a weak noise bubbled from deep in his stomach instead. “You’re okay,” Keith breathed and Lance gave a broken smile in response. He coughed a few times and Keith could feel the air from it stutter across his cheeks, but he was too focused on the fact that there was air at all to care about the vomit stench on Lance’s breath. “Lance, I thought you were going to,” Keith left his thought unfinished and slipped his unoccupied hand under the small of Lance’s back to pull his husband up into a hug. The brunet coughed against Keith’s neck, but he still found the energy to lightly return the embrace. His hands were shaking, though, and so were his arms. His whole torso was trembling and his nose was ice against Keith’s neck. His breath came out weakly and hotly compared to the frigid brush of his lips along Keith’s pulse. His rocketing pulse. Gods, he’d almost lost Lance’s pulse. He grounded his hands by cupping the back of Lance’s neck so his thumbs sat just under his husband’s jaw so he could feel it. His unsteady, feathery, fast pulse. But it was a pulse that was there. 

“You’re so c-cold,” Lance stammered with a hoarse voice. “Your armor is too cold.” Keith pulled back and gingerly lowered Lance down to the ground again, hand remaining steady against Lance’s neck in case he  _ had _ sustained an injury to his head or neck when the branch fell. The knight’s hands went to the clasps holding his armor in place and he got ready to shed it. “Shit, maybe  _ I’m _ just cold,” the brunet hissed and the knight instantly bridged the distance he’d created; he placed his hands atop his husband’s cheeks with a frown. His thumbs brushed back and forth there, as though the tiny bit of friction would be enough to warm Lance’s thoroughly chilled body. Keith felt a shudder dart up and down his spine as he realized his next obstacle was probably hypothermia. He couldn’t lose Lance, he couldn’t lose him. The desert sun was setting and it wouldn’t be warm out much longer. Lance was cold—too, too cold—and the sun wasn’t going to help him.

“Can you stay here alone for a minute? I can run off and get the supply bag downstream and check if there’s anything still dry in it,” Keith replied, beginning to peel his hands from Lance’s face. At that, the shuddering man pitched forward, sitting up into his retreating palms desperately. He shook his head with a shaky exhale and another wheezing noise. He looked so pathetic, sounded so helpless, Keith didn’t dare make another attempt at leaving for the bag. “Is there a spell that can help, then?” He made sure to soften his voice and made equally sure not to let his inner mantra come through.  _ I can’t lose you, I can’t, I can’t. I won’t. _

“Maybe,” Lance’s voice caught on the word and he began to wheeze again, “I don’t personally know any spells against hypothermia, though.” He tumbled a little closer to Keith’s chest tiredly, until his forehead was resting against the metal Keith knew was too cold for Lance after all the brunet had been through in the icy river water. Keith slipped his hands from Lance’s cheeks and moved one to cup his spine and the other to slide between his husband’s forehead and the cold metal of his chest plate. Cold. Keith wrinkled his nose at the repeated reminder of hypothermia. He certainly didn’t know any spells against it and he couldn’t recall any of Shiro’s non-combat lessons about it, either. 

“Fire spells? I can grab wood,” Lance shook his head, groaning, and leaned more of his body against Keith, effectively silencing the man with the onslaught of worry that crashed against him at the action. He couldn’t leave him like this, but he couldn’t let him go without heat, either. He couldn’t lose him, he couldn’t. “I don’t have to go far,” he comforted. Lifting his head, he scanned the area for the closest dry tree and spotted that it was only a few yards away. “It’s just over there,” he hummed, nudging Lance’s head up enough to see the closest tree. The brunet remained relatively unswayed and stayed pressed close to Keith, desperation painting every breath.

“I don’t know much about fire spells,” he admitted after a cough he attempted to stifle in his throat. It muffled, but still rose into his words, shaking them. “But I know enough of one to get a fire going.” He reluctantly pushed back from Keith, sliding his hands around until they landed on Keith’s frozen chest plate, and then weakly pushing himself away. Keith was just as reluctant to leave. He felt his pulse climb his throat at the idea of it. He felt it settle there at the top awkwardly, pushing against his tongue and making it impossible to swallow. His thoughts were still buzzing with the possibility of losing Lance.

Pushing wet bangs back from his husband’s paling forehead, he nudged the man’s chin up with his other hand and asked, “Lance, are you sure you’re fine on your own for a minute?” At the somewhat aggravated nod of a head the question elicited, the push of it against the palm he had holding up Lance’s hair, he hesitantly let go. His whole body seemed to lurch against the motion, like it was dragging him back to Lance in a panic. Like, if he let go, Lance would crumple back to the dirt and cease to breathe again. Like he would die the very second he hit the ground. 

But he neither fell backward nor failed to breathe, so Keith stood up. Water sloshed on the insides of his armor and spilled to sit atop the oversaturated mud in a murky puddle as he did. As though his eyes had a line of vision sewn at the edges to Lance and his shuddering, bluish skin, he continued to watch his husband as he moved to the closest tree. In the dire state of the current situation, the indispensability of the wood he was on his way to gather, he forgot his trepidation of using his sword when in the forest; it unsheathed easily and swung with just as little effort. He hacked away at the nearest, lowest hanging branch, but with his gaze still warily locked onto Lance, shot over his shoulder, and angled downward behind him, most of his strikes landed in different places on the branch. He realized swinging like that was ultimately futile and tore his gaze away—quite actively tore, since he was so glued to his husband and his husband’s weak sputtering into his fist, which he was doing now—until he could focus on the branch. It didn’t take long to fell it like that. 

Hitting the ground with a loud noise that had Lance yelping a few meters away and Keith whipping around and dropping his sword in response, the wood rolled around the dirt and sent a plume of it up. Keith coughed and brought one hand over his mouth, while the other reached carefully to the sword he’d just dropped. His hands were wet and turned the dirt on its hilt to mud. Even so, he managed a few swings to break the wood into smaller pieces. He then slipped the sword sloppily and haphazardly back into its sheath as he continued to squat, then reached his muddy hands out to scoop the branch’s unevenly cut pieces into his arms and to tug it tightly against his chest.  _ The branch. _ His line of sight swung unsteadily to the other side of the river, the damned tree there, the broken remains of its limb overhanging the water, and the newfound lack of a visible enemy to blame for it all; the sight of such a terrible array of things filled him with an unusual and strong urge to spit. To spit across the river and to shame the greenery on the opposite bank. 

He did not, mainly because he could not, and he faced toward Lance instead. The brunet was still breathing, though the way he did it sounded shallow and noisy, and the condition of those breaths made Keith’s ankles teeter dangerously as he made his way back to him. The knight noted how much farther downstream they were than was originally intended in their journey and wondered if he should risk traveling upstream a ways with the possibly-hypothermia-inflicted Lance to compensate. Figuring he couldn’t carry both Lance and the firewood, he decided against it, at least for the time being. 

As Keith got closer to Lance, the shudder in his husband’s form was even easier to perceive. Dropping the firewood so it thumped dully against the dirt, so its pieces clacked sharply against one another, and so it all splattered the front of his metal boots with mud, Keith kneeled in front of Lance. He choked on a wave of protectiveness when the brunet looked up at him with his knees to his chest and under his chattering chin. Frail was the waver of his eyes along Keith’s frame. Feeble was the tremble of his fingers as he unfurled them from around his legs and reached them out to Keith in search of his body heat. Vulnerable was the soft murmur of the knight’s name from his lips. The same sickliness of Lance’s whole form was mirrored in the unwell ache of Keith’s heart; his chest burned with its throb of a desire to help and its inability to do so. He thought he might tip over and empty his stomach onto the mud at the feel of it. 

The helplessness, its tangible lump in his throat, was cleared with a cough into his fist. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get the supply bag to find something dry? I don’t mind,” he breathed, taking one of Lance’s outstretched palms between the thumbs and forefingers of each of his own hands and kneading softly. Lance curled his fingers over Keith’s and shook his head. “Okay.” Keith took his hands back and finally took his armor off for real. The sun was hardly a sliver over the horizon now and with the cold inching closer and crashing into him like a wall with each breath of wind, he started to worry he too was at risk for hypothermia. As he unlatched his chest plate and the armor over his shoulders, he gestured to the firewood with a jut of his jaw. “Do you think you can light that?” Lance nodded, his hands retreating closer to his bent, cluttered knees. The palms of those hands lit with a small flame, which sparked in the peripheral of Keith’s vision as he refocused on removing the armor over his feet and shins. 

It was puny; the spell Lance conjured was the size of a grape, at best. It was merely the twinkle of a street lamp when you squint your eyes, the stretch of it along the slit of your pupil that can see, the illumination of your eyelashes. The bead of fire slipped to the tip of Lance’s index finger and he reached that out to touch it to the firewood Keith had gathered. The stack of sun bleached tree bark caught aflame and began to smoke just as the knight had removed his last bit of armor, one of his metal boots, and resettled it in the palms of his hands to rub the splattered mud off with his thumbs. That very same moment, Lance lurched forward with a pained screech. “Lance!” Keith dropped the boot he’d been somewhat polishing and his hands instantly went to cup the back of Lance’s neck. 

“I’m fine,” the mage groaned, sounding very much  _ not _ fine and wrapping his arms about his middle as though he were going to spill from the seams there, should his arms relieve any pressure whatsoever. “I’m fine,” he rocked himself forward and back again, “I’m just too tired for magic.” A few deathly sounding wheezes escaped his lips. “Too tired, too cold,” he murmured to himself, seemingly miserable enough not to notice Keith shucking his undershirt off and then reaching carefully for Lance’s similarly soaked leather armor and undershirt. All of them ended up strewn and flattened about the circumference of the barely contained fire, before Keith nudged Lance closer to the heat as well. A gentle tap to the space between Lance’s shoulderblades was all it took for the brunet to get the hint and to inch forward. His pulse couldn’t be felt beneath the layers of icy—way too icy—skin there. “It’s still so cold,” he muttered.

“It’s okay,” Keith whispered, setting himself up behind Lance so the fire would warm Lance’s front enough to keep him healthy and so Keith would keep the other half of him from freezing. “You’re gonna be okay.” How much of that reassurance was for Lance and his chattering murmurs of being too cold? How much was for Keith and his lingering adrenaline from almost watching and feeling Lance die beneath the heels of his palms? How much was merely empty, hushed noises for the night air’s symphony of croaking crickets and rustling trees? 

Lance continued to babble as Keith tucked his arms over his husband’s stomach. “I wouldn’t have even been able to say goodbye,” he said, hardly more of a sound than the crinkle of a single leaf in the wind. “I almost,” Keith felt tears well behind his eyes, “I almost died,” so he shut them. “Keith,” a few drops of saltwater pried their way through his eyelids anyway, “Keith, I don’t wanna die,” and they fell along Lance’s neck, where he’d stubbornly hid his crying eyes and his dripping nose. “Why me? Why do they want to kill me?” Keith felt a chin brush along his forehead as Lance turned his head to look at the crown of his scalp desperately. He could feel the heavy gaze there, wading through the waves of his tangled and matted hair as though it were an ocean at the bottom of which there’d be an answer. It wasn’t. “Please,” the word had Keith’s tongue feeling swollen at the back of his mouth, at the top of his throat; it had everything tasting like salt as more of his tears trailed into the crevice of his lips. “You were right to be worried,” he wished he wasn’t, he wished he wasn’t. “Keith, just  _ please, _ ” yes, one thousand, million, times yes. Anything, anything, he’d do it. “Don’t let them kill me.” 

The knight let out a sudden and humid breath that wobbled and whined. His grip tightened around Lance’s waist. “I won’t.” He pulled back just a few inches and, at the opportunity such a motion presented, Lance willed the strength within himself to spin so Keith was warming his front and so the fire was licking the cure for hypothermia up his spine. “Fuck, I won’t,” he tucked his nose into the curve of Lance’s shoulder and his sight trained onto the fire behind his husband, unclear and too bright against the water in his eyes. “We’re gonna get the results of the magic in these blood samples, we’re gonna run a sword through whoever is after you, and we’re not gonna let them hurt you.” Lance sobbed loudly next to his ear, a broken cry of his name. “I’m not going to let them hurt you.” Keith slammed his eyes shut again, though the lack of vision did nothing, save to send his heart rate busting to speeds far higher than what was healthy. He couldn’t shut his eyes because he couldn’t lose Lance. “I promise,” anything, anything, he’d do it, “I promise,” whatever it would take, whatever he’d have to do, “I’m not going to let them kill you.” Lance’s hands scratched weakly over Keith’s back as the man tried to ground himself, as he tried to drag himself back up from being halfway in his grave, as he crawled out from being buried only three feet under, and as he rocked his head back to sniffle at the beginnings of the night’s constellations. “I promise,” Keith whispered again.

But as he opened his eyes to look back at that fucking tree, at the dangers it would forever serve as a symbol of in his mind, and at the footprints of an enemy he still couldn’t even name, he realized, once more, he couldn’t promise a damn thing. A whole day’s travel, at least, to Lance’s hometown. A whole day he had to fight against an unidentified threat. A whole day he had to be wary of every person, every place, and evidently, every plant and object they passed. He could promise he’d do as much until the sun rose again and for all those hours, it would be completely true, but he could never promise those efforts would be enough. He couldn’t promise Lance what he’d just promised him. Surely, Lance was smart enough to know he couldn’t. But his sobs quieted, his skin warmed, and his shuddering slowed at the false assurance regardless. 

Keith didn’t improve like Lance did. 

His heart still ached.

His chest still burned.

His eyes still stung.

His hands still trembled.

And as he pressed everything that ailed him closer to Lance as a cure to both of them—they were each other’s cures, after all; they were each other’s antidotes to any poisons they could face—he knew why he’d remained so inconsolable. Words sat at the end of his tongue, as they had since the moment Lance had begun to die and as they had since he’d been revived. He’d remained too shaken to voice them, yet also too broken to piece himself back together without having voiced them. 

Gingerly kissing Lance’s neck, Keith mouthed the words and the question he was too weak to say aloud against the warming skin.

_ Don’t leave me. I can’t lose you.  _

_ Can you promise me you won’t let me lose you? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me what you thought :)  
> And leave kudos if you enjoyed it! (please... please... get me some beets...)  
> A certain someone almost bawled like a baby while writing this thicc chapter lmao


	6. We'll Be Alright; There's No Other Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha remember when my updates were like 8,000 words?  
> Get ready for over 20,000 this time, y'all  
> (I'm sorry)
> 
> P.S. I recently mentioned how I wasn't planning to include a klance wedding since I've never personally been to a wedding, but I now have been invited to go to my first wedding next year! (cuz no one lives near me y'all and plane tickets are for rich folk ;-;) Catch me being inspired to write klance then, tho. Also, I included a snippet of a klance wedding before finding that out anyway lmao
> 
> Without further ado! Enjoy my thicc update!

“We should take turns keeping watch,” Lance murmured when he finally managed to find his voice again. Keith wasn’t sure where he’d dug his voice up and he wondered if he could find his own ability to speak in the same place. Had Lance’s voice been lost to the curve of Keith’s neck, where he’d buried his nose and his breath for almost an hour as they huddled around the fire? Had it been retrieved in the ridges of Keith’s spine, where he’d been giving his fingertips a distraction in periodic brushing and tapping, like the divots were braille and he was blinded by his tears; like he was too afraid to read any other way. Had his voice been in the tangled strands of Keith’s hair, the ones he’d gotten stuck between his eyelashes when he’d cried against his pulse? Could Keith find his voice in Lance’s voice, in the gentle ebb and flow, rise and fall of his tone?

“No,” he squeezed past his lips. Dry and cracking could describe both the skin and the words there. “No. You need rest.” Lance pulled back and Keith’s hair remained stuck to the drying tears in his lashes and the ebony strands only fell back over Keith’s collarbones when Lance blinked. Shock was written in bold letters across that slow, tired, hesitant blink. “I’ll watch tonight. You can sleep.” Lance shook his head and the motion seemed to stutter like the hinges of an old door. “Please, you almost died; you need to sleep.” Another creaky door’s swing, then Lance was pushing closer to Keith and shivering against him, which seemed to serve no purpose other than to support Keith’s request. His fingers went back to reading the bumps in Keith’s back. They traced over the scars there, too, moving to and filling each one like water searching for lower ground.

Keith felt Lance’s chest rise and bump into his own with a hearty breath in, then felt it puff back out, now spelling words. “And you practically had a heart attack when you swam after me, I assume, so we should split the sleeping evenly.” Remaining reluctant, Keith lifted his fingers to the back of Lance’s head and dug his fingers into the hair along his scalp. Oh, how he wanted to say yes. He wanted to sleep and sleep and to drift away on dreams he was foolishly imagining as something more pleasant than the nightmares they’d likely be, after the day he’d had. He wanted the relief of a few hours of sleep so badly. So passionately. And yet his desire to keep Lance alive burned far more passionately, both because he’d promised he’d do so and because he couldn’t bear to have it any other way. So, he dug his fingertips through Lance’s hairline just as he stubbornly dug his metaphorical heels into the metaphorical ground.

“We’re almost there, Lance,” he attempted to convince. “I’ll sleep when we get to your village.” A protesting groan sputtered against Keith’s neck, but its source—the exhausted, withering brunet held so gently in the circle of the head knight’s arms—seemed too far drawn in by a siren’s promise of sleep to truly protest anything. While that was likely the cause of Keith’s victory in the argument, it was also the cause of a deep concern in his gut. Lance was too complacent, too pliant, for Keith to be anything other than concerned. He seemed too defenseless as he was and Keith suddenly felt exposed where they were, with his back bared to an open plain of dirt and whatever attackers might have been inhabiting it. Lance’s back was illuminated like it was on center stage by the fire he’d made, a glowing gold that probably begged to be pierced by an arrow or slashed by a sword. Furthermore, his shoulder blades and his warm skin beneath Keith’s palms were both out in the chilly night air—that managed to get colder by the second—and open to attack from any of their enemies that might have planned to come from upstream. Both he and Keith were completely unprotected by the armor they’d removed to stay warm. None of that would stand as it was.

The head knight lifted and swiveled his head from where it had been resting atop Lance’s, looking for a better place to stuff themselves for the night. Finding a dip in the dirt, illuminated just barely by the crooked sliver of a moon in the sky and tucked next to an outcropping of rock, he decided moving there would be the safest plan. Lance was still dead weight against his chest, though, steadily falling further and further into unconsciousness, if Keith was judging by the depth of his inhalations. They couldn’t move yet, with Lance still hooked onto him like Keith was his lifesource and tucked against him in search of the heat to keep him alive. Lance needed to settle into a healthy body temperature before he could move. One obstacle at a time. And Keith also needed to be sure no one watched them move because that would defeat the whole purpose of that snug, little nook and all the coverage the nearby foliage provided.

Slowly, so as not to stir the husband he had snugly fit over his front, he turned back forward to look at the dark, wine colored waves of the river and to search for any threats. No one was there. It was still safe. Carefully, unbearably carefully because he knew any amount of carelessness would leave Lance searching and reaching out for his body heat in his sleep, Keith removed a palm from where it had warmed a patch of Lance’s skin and he lowered it to his undershirt, which was still flattened out around the fire. Mostly dry. With a ginger movement meant to spare his husband’s pulse from shooting into a frenzy when he woke up, the knight brought his hand back to Lance’s skin. Reluctantly, Keith pushed against what of Lance’s back he held and tapped the spots with drumming fingers to ease him awake. With a hum, the brunet lifted his head from where it had been nestled beneath Keith’s Adam’s apple and his hair was ruffled about his head an strewn with moonlight in its roots like a crown. Dried tears were on his cheeks—though Keith could assume his own cheeks looked much the same way—and charcoal smudges of dark circles were wedged under his eyes. His lips were parted, likely because all the crying he’d done had stuffed his nose up too much to breathe otherwise. He still looked the epitome of disheveled and miserable, but at least his skin had some of its color back and he looked far less on the brink of death. Less cold, too. Even so, Keith reached out for Lance’s dry undershirt again to pull over his head to provide him even less reason to be cold.

Lance had done a lot of it himself, but Keith still ended up dressing him alone, for the most part, because the brunet’s hands were too shaky and fumbling to work on their own. Only after Lance was snugly stuffed back into his own undershirt and leather armor did Keith even consider dressing himself. Lance was far more at a risk of hypothermia than he was, after all. It took countless nods of the brunet’s head in assurance that, yes, he was alright, and, yes, he was warm enough, before Keith let his fingertips brush along his own warmed undershirt. He tugged it over his head hastily because his brain was telling him even the split second without visibility of the landscape around him was enough time for someone to lurch forward with a drawn, aimed, and sharpened blade. That even a millisecond with his eyes off of Lance meant he could lose him. Maybe not switching off who slept was a blessing in disguise because he was way too worked up, too caffeinated by Lance’s near death, to shut his eyes for longer than a blink.

Lance seemed to notice Keith’s anxiety-driven motions because he tiredly asked if Keith was alright. So, so, tiredly. His words were slurred in the question, his eyes were watery and unfocused, his hands were too soft in their prod at the wrinkles between Keith’s brows. The knight could practically see the world rocking back and forth in the reflection on Lance’s eyes. He could see the dizziness in the way one of his hands was climbing Keith’s bicep to find purchase against his shoulder. Lance’s eyebrows pushed closer together and he stopped prodding at Keith’s to pinch the bridge of his own nose. Gods, he really wasn’t well.

“We should move somewhere safer,” Keith muttered, his fingers ghosting over the bags under Lance’s eyes and softly batting Lance’s hands away from squeezing the migraine at the front of his head. His husband leaned into the touch, the gentle brush of Keith’s fingers over the bruises etched into the undersides of his eyes, and his agreeable nod only came after Keith removed his fingers. Lance gave that confirmation weakly and with a laugh, however.

“When did _you_ become the strategist between us, huh?” And Keith pondered the answer to the weakly, shakily, hoarsely asked question. It didn’t take much thinking to come to the conclusion that he’d become the strategist when Lance had become too injured and too often in danger to do it himself. The weak hold to Keith’s shoulder and the furrow of Lance’s brows as he tried to refocus his eyes reminded him of as much. “But yeah,” Lance said, voice stronger and a little more himself. “We should move somewhere less out in the open.” He rolled off of where he’d been crumpled in Keith’s lap, slipping onto his behind in the dirt, and the knight hurriedly reached a hand out to grab his collar at the way he almost fell backwards into the fire behind him. Lance disregarded the outward reach, though, and stood up before Keith could get ahold of his undershirt or his armor.

The standing motion was another thing that had Keith scrambling forward, however, since he was just as wary of Lance standing as he was of Lance tilting back like he had. He kept telling himself Lance was too soon in the recovery process from almost drowning to stand on his own and the way he rocked back on his heels unevenly seemed to only support such a conclusion. “Lance!” He jolted to stand up after him, his hand already cupping the back of his husband’s neck steadily, even before he’d found balance himself. “You shouldn’t,” he curled his bare toes against the dirt and bit his lip as the sudden rush of adrenaline from Lance’s wobble died down. “I can carry you, if you want,” he offered finally. His head had dipped sometime during the offer, hanging over Lance’s shoulder.

Lance laughed and swayed back again, an action Keith was alerted of when Lance’s neck and its reassuring heat pressed back against his curved palm. “Keith, I know I had my head underwater for a bit, but I don’t need you to carry me. I’m alright, hun.” The words riled something within the knight and he felt the urge to argue about them. _A bit._ That was how long one would describe being underwater if they merely dunked beneath the waves to wet their hair. _A bit._ That was how one would describe the length of a sigh or a tired, heavy blink. _A bit._ That wasn’t how long Lance had been underwater, without air. _A bit._ He’d been under so long his lips were still, even over an hour after the fact, tinged purple. _A bit._ He’d been under so long his shoulders still trembled in the cold every minute or so. _A bit…_ Keith bit his tongue to keep from crying, or scoffing, or gawking at the phrasing. He bit his tongue to keep from arguing.

“I’m not trying to coddle you,” he assured, cupping his hand along Lance’s nape with just a little more fervor to assure himself that his husband was still very much alive beneath his touch. Lance raised a cocky eyebrow at his claim of not coddling him and Keith turned to show him his cheek at the look. “Alright, maybe I’m coddling you a little.” He swung his head back to look down at Lance and he frowned. “But it’s not because I think you’re not good enough or something. I just know I’d never forgive myself if something happens to you and it could have been stopped if I just _did_ something about it!”

“I know,” Lance answered. He placed a hand atop Keith’s, the one behind his neck, and removed each of Keith’s fingers from the spot individually, until Keith got the message and removed his hand on his own. “You were right. I should have been more worried about my safety, I should have taken the hint from the forest this morning, but I need _you_ to worry about _your_ self, too.” When Keith’s hand reluctantly pulled back from his nape, Lance tugged it into his grasp and cradled it for a few seconds, staring at that point at which they met. “If you’re busy carrying me around or sweeping away pebbles in my path at the freak chance I’ll trip or something, you’re not looking out for yourself and I’ll be inconsolable,” he placed the back of his free hand to his forehead dramatically, “if something happens to my dear husband.” Dropping the hand he’d rested along his forehead, he gave a lopsided, easy smile. “Imagine how easy a target I’ll be then.”

Keith huffed. “Fine! You’re right. I’ll stop being so obsessive.” Lance smiled and released Keith’s hand, letting his own begin to slump back to his side, but Keith caught it before it could go far. “But! I’m still going to baby you until we get you to someone who can give you some kind of medical review because you weren’t _breathing,_ Lance. For _so long._ You’re still shaking now.” He lifted the hand he was holding in front of Lance’s eyes, no more than half a foot from his face, so he could see the way his fingers were trembling. “Your skin is still too cold.” He slipped his hold higher on Lance’s hand so he could warm his fingers, which were just a little colder than they should have been. Lance’s eyes darted to the side when he evidently began to truly feel the difference in temperature between Keith’s skin and his own. “You’re clearly not okay, Lance.”

Begrudgingly lifting his gaze from where it had been thrown into the dirt earlier, Lance furrowed his brows. “Okay, _Romeo,_ I give you permission to cradle me in your arms and coddle me like a toddler until we can _both_ get looked over. But after that, we’re back to being equals, okay? We’re partners. Deal?” He stuck the hand Keith wasn’t holding, his right one, out for a handshake on the proposed deal, but Keith didn’t shake on it; he spun the hand he was warming in his own so its back was pointed up at his head. Lance gave him a confused look for a moment, before Keith brought the hand up to his face.

He stared at it for a moment. It was dark out, so it was hard to stare at it with any intent of actually seeing it, but the dwindling remains of the fire caught on the skin of both their hands. It made the skin of both almost the same golden color. But Keith’s gaze was on the ring on Lance’s golden finger, an even darker tint of gold that was too shaded by Lance’s other fingers to capture the fire’s light. Instead, it twinkled white at its center and near black at its edges as moonlight leaked into its curve and dripped around it. “Deal,” he breathed, bringing the ring to his lips and looking up at Lance’s soft face. It had gotten softer at the tender gesture, smoothed at the edges and lips curling like the moonlight curled around his ring.

“Deal,” Lance said back, grabbing the left hand at Keith’s side and kissing his ring as well. And then Keith tugged his hand from Lance’s grasp with a grin and the softhearted mood was gone, replaced by a different kind of affection when Keith pushed Lance’s shoulder so he spun a little and doddered a step or two away in shock. A second after that, Keith was chopping his hand into the back of Lance’s knees so his legs crumpled into Keith’s awaiting arms, along with his whole body. “Hey, no, don’t do it!” But it was far too late and the head knight had already tugged his husband into his arms and yanked him up to his chest, true to his promise of coddling Lance until they got to a source of medical attention. Though his sigh was loud, Lance still let his arms come to loop around Keith’s neck. “Asshole.”

The head knight was never happier to be called an asshole in his life. That one statement, that one huff of an angry, rude, halfway vulgar word against the underside of his jaw and the end of his chin, was the most lively he’d heard Lance since he’d almost drowned. If being called an asshole was the price for hearing Lance breathing and thinking and _living,_ then he’d happily get it tattooed on his forehead or written on a scrap of paper and stapled to his chest. He’d get it on his tombstone, so long as Lance would be alive to see it done.

Lance didn’t say much after that, though, and perhaps it was for the best, considering how they were moving across the desert to reach a better hiding place. It wouldn’t do for him to make a ruckus while they were sneaking as they were. Nonetheless, Keith looked down to make sure the silence wasn’t for undue causes, to make sure nothing negative was swirling in Lance’s mind and tightening his jaw and tying his tongue. He merely caught a glimpse of Lance’s lovestruck gaze, though. Narrow brows drawn slightly together, faintly purple lips pinned up at the edges, and everything else Keith was accustomed to seeing when he came home from a long mission, or cooked Lance dinner, or offered to do the shopping for the week. But he hadn’t done anything like that, so he rose an inquisitorial eyebrow. Lance shifted his weight when he unlooped his arms from Keith’s neck and the knight struggled to compensate, but with the way his husband’s hands resettled on both of his cheeks, cold thumbs under both of his eyes, he found it hard to be bothered.

“I love you,” Lance assured. Keith swore the moonlight scattered over Lance’s face and spelled the words out on his cheeks; he surmised that the shining stars made the declaration sound even more beautiful. He placed Lance in their new hiding spot, spine against a tree, before he said it back. Lance kept his hands on Keith’s cheeks as he was put down, so the knight had a difficult time straightening up after the fact. The moonlight didn’t come through the outcropping of rock on one side of the hiding place, nor did it shine through the trees on the other, and thus Keith decided he was wrong; Lance and the words he spoke were always as beautiful as they’d been in the moonlight.

“I love you, too.” Lance’s hands fell again, thumbs slipping along Keith’s cheeks like ice water or frigid raindrops. Free from his husband’s hold, though he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to be free of such a loving touch, he stood up again. “My armor is still by the river, so I’m gonna run back and get it. You gonna be alright by yourself?” Lance nodded, waving his wrist dismissively. As though the flick of his wrist was a shove in the direction they’d come from, Keith started jogging back to the riverbank.

His feet were still bare and he, if asked, wasn’t going to lie and say he liked the feel of the dust coating his heels and toes. It made him feel too dry. He’d been distracted by Lance when crossing the desert to their hiding spot before, but he no longer had that luxury. He was too sensitive to everything without Lance. Perhaps his disdain for the dirt was a manifestation of his disdain for leaving his unwell husband alone behind him. Perhaps he was too sensitive because he was anxious about it. His gaze kept flicking back over his shoulder unwittingly as he jogged and even when he got to the riverbank, he watched his husband as he gathered his armor. He fumbled with the metal pieces because of that.

The brunet was fine; he was fiddling with his hands to occupy himself and not all that visibly worried. And yet, as Keith sat on the ground and began to pull his boots on, he couldn’t help but feel panic soak up all the moisture in his mouth like a sponge. He hated the distance between them. He hated how long it would have taken him to get there if something happened. He assured himself nothing would happen, but it didn’t help.

Keith strapped the armor for his shins on next, but he elected not to put on his chest plate because he was confident Lance would need his body heat to stay warm again. He decided his shoulder armor would be alright to put on, though. His sheath, with his sword inside, was tied loosely around his waist, having been retrieved from wherever along the river’s edge he’d dropped it earlier. By his assumption, the fire would be necessary again, so he hacked a few more pieces of firewood from the closest tree. Piling it inside the chest plate he refused to wear for the time being, he carried it all in one hand, while in the other hand he lit a few twigs to transport the flames; it was better not to make Lance cast another spell as he was. He stomped out the old fire and kicked its ashes around before he ran back to Lance.

The man was beginning to doze off against his tree. He kept nodding forward, before he’d shake his head rapidly and rub the tired bruises under his eyes. His eyes looked almost caved in with how deep a grey the bags under them were. His fingers looked pale against them as he rubbed the delicate skin. Keith couldn’t go faster than he was already walking or he’d snuff out the fire he was bringing, but he wanted to sprint there so he could kiss the bruises away. Gods, he couldn’t wait until they made it to someone who cold look Lance over.

When he stopped his march to Lance, the brunet’s hair had fallen over his forehead and his head had ducked forward. He was asleep. Had Keith not been watching him the whole time he was gone, he might have been upset that Lance let his guard down so easily, but he couldn’t stand to be upset when he got even closer to those dark bags under his eyes and the slump of his shoulders. He couldn’t be mad at someone that tired. It made him feel a little guilty when he bent down next to Lance, which tilted his chest plate a little too far to one side, and the firewood he’d gathered rolled over the edge and fell into the dirt with a clatter. Lance startled awake at the sound and he immediately backed himself up against the tree trunk behind him, fear painted across his frantically scrambling hands and his wildly searching eyes. But those eyes found only Keith and they calmed.

Setting his chest plate down, the knight rearranged the firewood and lit it, before he turned to Lance. He was going to move over and help him up, but the brunet started moving on his own before he could. After scooting less than a meter forward, he tapped the dirt behind him with an open palm. Keith caught on, a smile brushing across his lips, and he occupied the space Lance patted without a second thought. With his back against the rough bark of the tree and with the beginnings of sapling branches poking between the backs of his ribs, he was confident staying awake the whole night wouldn’t be an issue. Yet, when Lance inched back again, his head nestling up until it was just below Keith’s chin and until the damp ends of his hair brushed along the knight’s jaw, Keith found his faint warmth in the sunless chill luring him towards the depths of sleep. With a yawn that tugged his dusty palms to his lips—dusty because he’d flattened them against the dirt as Lance resettled himself—he reconsidered his insistence that Lance be the one to sleep all night. Maybe he could ask Lance to stay up an hour or two so he could squeeze some shut eye in before dawn.

Lance coughed and rocked forward, crashing back against his Keith’s chest after he finished, and Keith jerked from the tree in shock. A couple of his own coughs sputtered from his chest at the impact. No, no, he couldn’t make Lance stay up. Not with the way he groaned in discomfort at his own wheezing and certainly not with the way he slumped against Keith’s chest after his choking. While so clearly tired, though, the brunet craned his neck to face Keith regardless, an unspoken offer to stay up in Keith’s stead on his lips. Feeling guilty for even having considered making Lance stay up, Keith wrapped his hands around Lance’s torso. He felt Lance’s stomach twitch in surprise under his palms and he watched as his eyes shifted to watch Keith tug him closer more attentively. Bringing his lips to the crown of his husband’s head, the knight murmured, “I’ve got you,” along his scalp. “You can sleep,” he promised. And that was all the swaying it took to convince the exhausted man in the circle of his arms.

And he’d nearly slumped all the way into the dirt when he fell asleep; if it weren’t for Keith’s arms being snug under his armpits in a backwards hug, he probably would have dirtied his armor completely. That’s how Keith even knew he’d fallen asleep, though. The way he softened in his grip like cooked rice and the way his head lolled to one side until his cheek was against Keith’s collarbone were the ways he knew Lance had passed out. It was like the man had melted and molded to the shape of Keith’s hug in a way that couldn’t be replicated by a conscious man, no matter how compliant to Keith’s whims Lance may have been while awake. No amount of waking trust could replicate the trust Lance had put in him by falling asleep against him while they were in the dangers the desert brought.

But the heat of Lance against his front like that was entirely intoxicating. Distracting, too. It all felt so much like they were safe. The night didn’t feel as cold, the sound of Lance’s gentle breaths as he slept was enough to drown out all of the noises of desert plant life in the breeze and desert wildlife scuffling about, and it suddenly felt like they’d been at home and in bed all along. The river, only a hundred long strides or so away, was just a source of whispered noises, no different than Lance’s exhales against Keith’s undershirt. The river that had almost killed his husband wasn’t evil like this, in a symphony with all of Lance’s warmth and peaceful sounds. The moonlight atop it was no longer the glint of fangs on its murky surface; it was a halo or a crown.

Everything seemed at peace.

Everything was easy and calm and the future was bright. Keith knew that was misleading, he knew they were in danger, and he knew it would be a mistake should he find his guard lowered, even for a second. And yet he lowered it regardless. He couldn’t help it because he was comfortable and exhausted, and with his tired, lowering eyelids came a relaxed, lowering guard. With Lance warm against him like a blanket and with the glow of a toasty fire ghosting over his drooping eyelids, his lashes were glued to his cheeks in an instant. He tried to claw his way back out of falling asleep, but it only served to wedge him deeper into the darkness. No matter what lies his dreams told him on the matter, it’d be a while before he woke up again. 

The knight was, though he didn’t know it, still under the influence of sleep, and the light of the sun was soon back, but in his fibbing, deceiving dreams. Keith thought himself awake again, despite being very far from it. Dreams often have a way of doing that. As do nightmares, with a twisted and cruel and keen eye for the details that hurt most. 

Thus Keith believed, upon feeling a glow of a dream-induced light against his eyelids again, he’d have woken up in the desert with Lance—he wasn’t waking up at all, but dreams seldom let their victims in on such a fact. And so, he expected a desert and not a scene from a dream. After all, a desert was where he’d been when he faintly became aware of falling under the waves of unconsciousness. He knew his assumption of desert had been starkly incorrect before he so much as  _ thought _ of lifting an eyelid, however. The nostalgia of where he actually was fell across his lungs like a punch to the gut as soon as he caught a whiff of it. An almost minty smell of pine, the soapy scent of freshly cleaned clothes, a sharp sting of newly cut grass, and the pleasant aroma of what could only be described as the warmth of the forest on a clear, sunny day. He’d known exactly what sunny day it had been, too. 

Having inhaled the whirlwind of memory-inducing scents, he knew exactly what he would see as he opened his eyes. Rocking his head forward until his nose pointed at the ground, he thought it odd to have found himself standing immediately upon waking up. But he opened his eyes anyway, brushing the confusion aside. His shoes came into focus first; his ivory, polished, expensive shoes made something whir in his chest. And then, upturned and out in front of him, he saw his hands; his pale, bare, ringless hands made excitement boil over in his gut. Ah, and below it all was the wooden platform someone had dragged out into the forest just for today; the familiar oak of it made his chest throb again. He wanted to smile because he knew perfectly well where he was. And so he did smile, as he lifted his gaze from his hands and his shoes until they reached a matching pair of shoes and hands across from him. Lance.

Lance, who was smiling twice as largely and twice as vibrantly, wore a duplicate suit a few feet away. He’d insisted they had to match because his mother had brought in a suit for each of them from a tailor in his home village when she came for the wedding. And they fit perfectly—Keith had his suspicions that Lance sent his mother their sizes in a letter—so he had no room to refuse them. Not that he ever would have after witnessing how pleased Lance had been with himself upon seeing his reflection in that suit. Keith had felt just as comfortable in his own suit as he had seeing Lance so excited and he found he had no desire to deny his husband the matching outfits he’d insisted upon. Gods, he applauded the Keith of a month ago because seeing Lance in that snowy suit made his heart race and ache and throb with all the joy and luck in the world. It made hearing the announcements immensely difficult.

What was the priest saying? Perhaps his words were lost to Lance’s smile, drawn into his lips, which were trembling from how hard he was smiling. Maybe they were under the sunlight in his hair or the beams of it on his raised cheekbones. But Keith wasn’t looking for his words anymore. He didn’t care what the priest was saying. He only cared what he knew it meant. In fact, he could suffocate in how Lance looked for all he cared. The image of the brunet like this, of his stunning face and of his hair shining gold and of him wearing his ivory suit, could be pulled over Keith’s head to smother him like a snuffer would a candle. He didn’t care; he wouldn’t mind it. If he went the rest of his life with no words seeping into his ears and only with this view, this sight of Lance, able to reach his eyes, he would have no complaints. Lance was worth living in silence and blindness for.

But something slipped through the fog in his mind.

Would he take Lance as his husband?

In one ear rang, “isn’t that why we’re here?”

In the other echoed, “who wouldn’t?”

On his lips sang, “I do.”

And something else slipped through the muffler over his ears when Lance said it back, but that was the last of what Keith could make out. The priest was talking again, probably something short and sweet to finish the ceremony and to initiate the kiss, but Keith was focused on how Lance managed to smile even wider, so his cheeks went red from the stretch of it. Red like the carnation tucked into the pocket of that pure, white suit. Keith had a blue one in his own breast pocket, but his eyes were on Lance’s because it seemed so red. Red. _Red._

Suddenly his memories were askew and that flower wasn’t so much red as it was maroon, the color of a deep wine or the freshly painted nails of some woman of importance. And soon maroon didn’t quite cover the depth of the color either—the color that was now seeping into that lovely, snowy suit—because the fabric had turned the shade of fresh blood. Keith reached a desperate hand out to the stitching over the breast pocket atop Lance’s chest, his heart hammering against his ribcage and climbing up to his throat. The palm of that hand flattened out just beneath that incorrectly colored breast pocket and before his other hand could shakily peel the pocket back and examine exactly why it had turned such a sickly color, that palm flat against Lance’s chest began to soak the fabric just as bloody a red as the pocket had become.

His heart throbbed faster.

Flinging his gaze up to Lance’s face, he found it pained. Tears were at the corners of his eyes and they brought the same to the corners of Keith’s. A reminder that this wasn’t right, that this wasn’t how their wedding had gone at all, pounded like a fist at the front of Keith’s forehead, but he was too hooked on ending the pained expression across his husband’s face to pay attention to it. Lance’s eyes shut and he fell forward. The pounding in Keith’s head got louder, more incessant, more pestering, but he ignored it again in favor of catching the brunet before he hit the floor of the wooden platform on which they stood. Lance didn’t seem grateful for having been caught and when he tilted his head up, his eyes were reopened and pained again.

Keith’s hands were on the small of Lance’s back, while the brunet’s slipped up from where they’d fallen against Keith’s chest. They swooped up to cup Keith’s cheeks and as they did, the knight felt something warm and thick and sticky smudge against his face. He noticed something smudge in the same place across Lance’s cheek to parallel the feeling. He caught a glimpse of that deep, violent red and refused to look at it fully, though. He stared at Lance’s reopened eyes—how they had begun to flash with something unkind—and he adamantly denied his desire to let his stare dip to that smudge; he had a good idea of what it was anyway. His predictions were confirmed when he felt Lance drag that smudge down to his lips and the scent hit his nose. Something vile and vicious and evil was scrawled across his husband’s features as he completed the motion and Keith nervously went to lick his lips, forgetting the smeared substance had been spread so kindly by Lance’s fingertips there. Forgot until he tasted it, that is.

Sharp and strong and metallic.

He didn’t consider himself particularly bloodthirsty, but having been in battle almost all his life, he knew what blood tasted like in an instant. The taste of a punch to the face and the subsequent split lip. The taste of a stumble and the resulting bitten cheek. The taste of a bloody nose left unattended too long until it hit his lips. His stomach throbbed and lurched forward, like it was trying to pound its way out from inside his gut, and his whole body swung forward like he was about to gag. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He remembered his wedding—how it went, what Lance looked like in his suit, how Lance had looked at him—and the dull, dark crimson Lance was wearing now and the swipe of blood over Keith’s lips was definitely nothing like how he remembered his wedding. It was unsettling and sickening, but most vividly, it felt _wrong._ Like running his hands _up_ a cat’s back instead of petting down, wrong. Like biting into a lemon and tasting something sweet, wrong. Like Lance looking at Keith like he was untrustworthy and vile instead of his loving husband, wrong.

A word clawed its way up Keith’s throat and sent a bead of blood dribbling from where it had previously sat upon Keith’s bottom lip. “What—” Lance’s gaze abandoned being dark and unloving and stuttered back to pained and unfocused, which tore Keith from his train of thought. The brunet drew his bloody palms back from Keith’s cheeks finally and he took a few shaky steps back. Keith’s arms remained looped desperately about his waist and his fingers dug into the fabric on the back of his reddening coat—the blood-colored flower was spreading its influence on more and more of Lance’s suit. He tried to bring Lance closer again, to keep him from stumbling away, and to keep him upright in his arms, but he continued to dodder back. As he did, his hands were pressed over his gut and wrenching the fabric there in a distressed grip, but it didn’t appear to be alleviating any of the pain.

The white fabric had turned crimson there, too.

Keith looked down at his own suit, thinking maybe he’d find the blood on his stomach as well, since the smudge on his cheek was mirrored across Lance’s, after all. He found the outfit pristinely white, save for two dark handprints on his chest, where Lance’s hands had been as Keith caught him. Before he lifted his stare to Lance again, he was already taking a hasty and concerned step towards him, hands outstretched and ready to help end the suffering on his features. He didn’t know what he could do, but certainly there had to be something. He could bring him to a healer or he could even heal him on his own. All he knew was that he had to help ease the pain somehow. Everything around him was fuzzy and not as it should have been—there was too much blood, it was too silent, and he saw too little detail in the scenery and decorations around them—but making sure his husband was safe had to come before figuring anything else out.

Though, as he caught Lance’s features again, the pain was already gone from what had been his watery eyes and bitten lips. Now his eyes were empty and unloving, his lips were flattened and unsmiling, and his eyebrows were drawn together above his scowl. Falling into a lax stance a few steps away from Keith, his hand tugged through his hair and left a streak of blood there, too, as everything his skin touched seemed to go red. Attempting to say his husband’s name in a concerned tone and hearing nothing come out, the knight brought his hand to the same spot in his hair in search of blood. He found none. And then Lance sighed, which sent the world spinning around Keith like the earth was a pinwheel and Lance’s breath had been a gust of wind into its folds. Everything blurred.

When Keith’s surroundings cleared, Lance was closer again and Keith was sitting in a chair that didn’t belong on the platform. Lance leaned over him and fiddled with his hair, tucking it behind his ears and pulling it back from his forehead; he felt a drop of blood land on his forehead as his husband did the latter. It rolled down the creases in Keith’s forehead from how he was furrowing his brows until it caught in the bridge of his nose. Another sigh passed Lance’s lips and he leaned further forward to brush his lips over the bloodstains it had left behind on his forehead. “Do you know why we’re here,” he ghosted a kiss over the miniscule puddle on Keith’s nose, “Keith?” The knight dared not shake his head with how dangerous Lance’s eyes had looked before his face was too close to Keith’s for it to be visible. When he pulled back, Keith finally gave that subtle swing of his head and Lance stuffed his hands lazily into his back pockets with a slouched stance. Blood red swarmed his pants and his whole suit became red at the contact. He had blood on his lips and an uncharacteristic expression—his eyes were narrowed and his disgust was palpable—when he spoke again. “Surely you do.”

Keith gave a firmer shake of his head, with sharper eyes and a tighter jaw, and he stood from his seat. He’d been sick to his stomach since the blood first came into view, but now he was confident and clear headed enough to pinpoint that something was definitely off. Setting his shoulders to a broad stance, the man took a wide, heavy step towards Lance. “What the hell is going on?” He nipped his tongue with how ferociously he was speaking, but Lance, or rather who he’d surmised likely wasn’t Lance at all, was undeterred. The man rolled back on his heels. “Who the hell are you?” He laughed.

“You know who I am.” Keith took another step forward, feet loud against the oak wood beneath his feet, and his eyebrows fell lower on his face in a scowl. Denial was on his bloodied lips, ready to be spilled on angry words, but the other man spoke again. “No?” He took a few stumbling steps away from Keith, sloppy and with weak ankles, but his confidence was written in sharp lines on his features. “Need a reminder?” After saying that, he seemed to reconsider his steps away and took a large one forward. His hands went to Keith’s nape, so his thumbs rested at the corners of his jaw and brushed back and forth in what would have been a soothing motion, had it not been leaving smears of blood in its wake. Had it not been the stroke of a paintbrush dripping crimson.

It also stood to argue whether or not this man was even Lance, but everything was wonky where they were, so Keith didn’t truly have the evidence to pursue either end of the argument. Assuming the worst, the knight held fast to the other man’s hips and tried to push away, but the grip about his nape and jaw proved infallible. The brunet merely leaned closer. Rocking from balancing on his heels to standing on the ends of his toes, the man clad in crimson pressed his mouth lightly to Keith’s. He stayed there for a moment, rolling his lips forward in a kiss that was disgustingly close to familiar. It tasted almost perfect, the motions were all the motions Lance would have used, and as he pushed his chest to Keith’s, it felt just like it did when his husband did it. But the tug of Keith’s lower lip between his teeth was too harsh and Keith struggled to push him back again. This time it proved fruitful and the man who wasn’t quite Lance took hasty steps away.

“Guess that reminder wasn’t quite your speed, huh?” He rolled his neck in a half circle and it cracked the whole way around. His fingertips drummed against his thighs smoothly, leaving beads of blood dripping down his pant legs each time his fingers hit. His eyes flashed with something akin to mischief. “That’s alright,” he said, a pliant smile parting his lips, “I’ve got a better reminder anyway.” Keith wanted to ask what it was, but he was terrified of the answer, so he bit his tongue. Bloody hands raising from his crimson pant legs, the other man slipped his thumbs under the front of his shirt and peeled it up, just enough to show his skin was dyed purple, black, and sickening shades of green. The skin of his hands next to it looked pale by comparison. Tanned skin seemed milky white next to the ebony and violets of his wrecked abdomen. “You remember these?”

The knight felt like he’d been punched in _his_ stomach, like _his_ was the one carved with so many bruises. Lance hadn’t had those injuries at their wedding and Keith knew that. Lance hadn’t gotten those bruises until years later; he didn’t get them until Lotor gave them to him. Until he’d been captured and had tried to escape. It was a disconnect in Keith’s brain; there was no way this could be happening and yet it was. He turned his eyes away with a jut of his chin towards where the wedding guests and the aisle would have been. Had things been how they should have been, that is. “Stop,” he muttered, catching a taste of blood in the air as he opened his mouth to speak. “You can’t have those bruises.”

The statement was met with a shaken head. “That wasn’t the question, Keith.” Lance bridged the gap Keith had shoved between them and one of his hands left the shirt he’d folded up to snatch Keith’s chin in a harsh grip. “I asked if you remembered them,” he snarled, forcing Keith’s stare to the marks marring his skin, but the knight’s eyes refused to dip to them. Instead they locked onto Lance’s eyes—he could conclude that they were indeed his eyes, since he’d been this close to them enough times to know precisely what they looked like—and he watched the way they flickered in an accusatory manner, pupils dilating and darting across Keith’s face. The head knight sucked a deep breath in to steady his heartbeat. It didn’t work. “Do you remember how I got them?” Keith shut his eyes, as if it would make the man glaring up at him disappear, but his words didn’t silence. No, they got louder and sharper and more enunciated, accusing Keith more and more harshly as they went on. “I got them because of _your_ carelessness,” he snapped. “Who promised to keep me safe when he married me? That’s why we’re at this damned wedding again, you know. It was _your_ failure to keep your promise that gave me these. So tell me, husband dearest, do you remember how I got these bruises?”

“I’m not your husband,” Keith hissed. He shook his head, just barely. Gods, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t his fault. Sure, Lance had given himself up to Haggar to keep _him_ safe and, yeah, _Keith_ had the weapon in his veins that Lotor was ultimately after, but it wasn’t his fault. And certainly Lance would never blame him, whether it was his fault or not. He began to recite as much to the doppelganger grasping his chin. “My husband would never—”

“Oh, but wouldn’t he?” The lookalike suddenly sounded much closer. “You’re a fool to think he doesn’t blame you,” he breathed against Keith’s neck. The knight’s eyes flew open and he shoved the man back with a vulgar warning to stay away. Because he was wrong. He was wrong. He had to be. Lance—his sweet, loving, dear, forgiving husband—would never insinuate it was his fault. He never had before. Even when he’d woken up from nightmares about being captured, which he’d done countless times, he’d never turned to Keith with fire in his eyes or an accusation on his tongue. And he’d never mentioned a nightmare in which it was _Keith_ who gave him his bruises. So, surely, not even his husband’s subconscious blamed him for what happened.

“He doesn’t,” Keith insisted, “Lance doesn’t blame me.” The knight lowered his face into his palms, though, finding his words were falling short of hitting his own eardrums and certainly turning to silence before they even _began_ to convince him. Was this man right? Did Lance truly blame him? Surely he didn’t. Lance, the man Keith woke up having snug against his chest every morning, couldn’t be someone who blamed him. Lance, the man Keith ate dinner with every night and the man he was caught staring at and smiling at on a daily basis, couldn’t be someone who traced the scar over his neck and thought of Keith. Lance, the man who said he loved Keith and who Keith told he loved back, certainly couldn’t be someone who thought it was his husband’s fault he wound up as he did.

The brunet scoffed at Keith’s insistence, though. “Oh, no? You think he doesn’t blame you for the bruises?” Keith uncovered his face and lifted his head just in time to watch the man let his shirt fall back against his stomach and smooth it out. His hands went to his neck and he loosened his ruby-colored tie enough to peel his collar back. Tracing a fingernail over the flesh there, he asked, “and what of this?” Keith watched him point to the pale strip of a scar and tap it twice with the pad of his index finger; blood was dripping over the ridge of it in an instant. “He always covers it. Don’t you find that strange, Keith? He’s ashamed of it. He’s worried someone else will see it. Why do you think that is?” The knight refused to think about it because he knew his anxious brain would come up with countless reasons, each more horrendous than the last. Lance—no, the man who just looked like him, Keith tried to assure himself through the guilt climbing his chest—stepped towards him again. He put his hands to Keith’s tie, undoing it enough to trace his fingertips over his Adam’s apple, same as he’d done with his own earlier. No mimicked scar to be found, but his bloodied fingers left a parallel stain. “Ever wonder why he hides it?”

Keith tried to pry the man’s fingers from atop his neck, but it was a useless effort with how he was now fumbling. Because his jaw had clenched and his knees had gotten weak at the prospect of Lance blaming him and his anxiety was roaring in his ears like a hurricane. He would have been lying had he answered no, he’d never wondered, because he thought about it every time he saw Lance tug on a turtleneck in the morning. He’d always assumed it to be because Lance didn’t like the mark on his previously unblemished skin or maybe because he didn’t like the reminder of the physical and emotional pain involved with getting the scar. He’d constantly told himself the scar was under layers of fabric, like it was behind a closed and locked door, because Lance was hiding it from where his eye might catch a glimpse of it in a mirror or a window and where he might be forced to recall how it got there. Keith felt sick knowing that might not be the case. “I—”

His husband’s copy cut his answer in half. “Say, you hold a pretty high position in the Altean army, don’t you?” He tightened Keith’s tie and fixed his collar. Then, leaning forward again, so his nose was inches from Keith’s chin, he smirked. “He kept being a witch secret to save your reputation,” he murmured, drawing a line along Keith’s cheek with a steady finger, and the knight was too far into his anxiety to push him away. “Who’s to say he wouldn’t do the same with that pretty, little scar? Wouldn’t do for people to know the head knight couldn’t even keep his own husband safe, after all. What would that do for your countrymen’s support of Altean troops?”

“Enough,” Keith growled, finally gaining the spirit to push the man back from his throat and from ghosting along his cheek. That’s not to say there weren’t tears brimming in his eyes and burning his vision. “That’s not why he… you’re wrong.” The brunet cackled as he fell a few paces away; the sound was something quiet and joking, but malicious intent was laced into the blue of his eyes. Like a swirl of blood in an ocean, it was almost impossible to detect the inauthenticity and viciousness in the seas of those baby blues. Keith straightened his tie and corrected his collar, as though doing so would save what little dignity he’d managed to maintain throughout this unrealistic encounter. “I’m done listening to you.” But his ears were still straining for whatever words the man clad in crimson might say next. He thought those words were lies, but his heart was clinging to them and throbbing with the dread that they might be true.

The man pulled his shirt up again, exposing what looked to be even darker bruises than he’d had before. “Sure thing, _babe,_ but you still haven’t answered me.” Keith refused to give this man the pleasure of seeing him watch those bruises with wide and horrified and guilty eyes, like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar, as he had before. His eyes were trained on the brunet’s. Yet his tactic was seemingly not as foolproof as he’d thought because, within an instant, the ruby man let his smirk fall. His gaze turned back to something pained and his eyes were soft again, just like Lance’s were when he looked at Keith. It was like all the vile nature had left his form and he let his lips fall open as he weakly, desperately, and in Lance’s loving voice, begged him for an answer. “Keith, tell me,” he breathed, softer than it should have been for the beginning to such a dark request. Keith wanted to cover his ears, he wanted to disappear, he wanted to cry, and he wanted to find wherever the love within his husband had gone. “Who did this?” Why had he been left with a husk of who he married and why had someone so intent on crushing Keith with guilt inhabited that husk? He tugged his face back into his hands before he slid his hands over his ears as he’d wanted to do, though he knew he’d be able to hear the man the moment he spoke again despite the coverage. He relished the moment of thought he’d been given, though.

This wasn’t right, this wasn’t how his husband acted, and this wasn’t how his wedding had gone. Nothing made sense as it was. It was utterly illogical to think this could be happening. It wasn’t possible. How could he be reliving his wedding and reliving it wrong? It didn’t… Something clicked in the front of Keith’s mind and his eyes flew open. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense! This all couldn’t possibly be happening. “You’re not my husband,” he uttered as he had before, but this time it was uttered with less desperation and pleading for it to be true and with more conviction. He was certain this wasn’t Lance. It couldn’t be because he and Lance were in the desert, not the forest they’d gotten married in. So what kind of spell was being cast over his eyes to make him think he was here? “You’re not my husband,” he hissed again, taking a step back. “What the hell do you know?! Stay the hell away!”

It didn’t deter the man in red, but it did make the world start to fall away around them both. “Not until you tell me! You know you’re responsible for everything that happened to him.” Keith shook his head, willing for this all to be a dream and—fuck, that was it! He’d been so tired, he had to have fallen asleep! He tried to claw his way out of it, but one last cry wormed its way into his skull and his guilt ridden gut before he could tear away. “Who did this,” it said, softer and no longer in Lance’s voice, but rather a woman’s he didn’t recognize.

And suddenly he was thrown awake. Panting and sweating and rocking forward with startled eyes that swept the dirt and the rest of the faintly brightening landscape, he was thrown awake. Lance stirred against his chest with a yelp at his sudden jerk forward, but he didn’t complain or have a chance to before Keith pressed a palm over his lips to silence him. Because that last question in his dream hadn’t been from a dream alone. Someone real had asked it. Someone Keith didn’t know.

The knight’s eyes were wide in an attempt to soak in what little of the dawn’s light there was. They were trained on the river they’d moved away from and his heart was batting against his chest as he cursed himself for falling asleep. There, prodding at the ashes he’d haphazardly and lazily and carelessly scattered about—though clearly not nearly enough—was a circle of at least three people. He tried to stifle his heavy breaths and tried even harder to completely wake from his nightmare because he was still halfway out of it. Thanking no one in particular for the fact that their second fire had burned out and was no longer alerting everyone to where they were, he turned Lance’s head toward the gathering of strangers. The brunet breathed shakily against his palm after he did, but caught the meaning of the warning message and Keith uncovered his mouth.

His sword and its sheath were still tied loosely and sloppily about his waist, so as he stood and sidled out from behind Lance, the knight drew the weapon. He crept to the outcropping of rock so his silhouette would blend in with its natural ridges and he hoped the light of the cracking dawn didn’t give him away. Lance was quick to follow and, stepping around the chest plate Keith had left on the ground—the one darkness disguised as a rock, if they were lucky—he slipped next to the head knight. His hand went nervously to rest atop Keith’s on his sword’s hilt; it was a mock holding of hands and Keith chanced a look away from the strangers to give his husband a reassuring nod. They would be alright. There was no other way.

One of the strangers spoke again, presumably the one who’d bent over and swirled a hand through the abandoned pile of charred firewood. “Who left these ashes? You think it’s them?” There was an uncertain murmur from the others in the group, nothing discernable by Keith from the distance between them. “We have to find whoever crossed the river,” the person kneeling stood up, “Lance was one of them, but we don’t know who else crossed with him.” Keith sucked in a nervous breath so quickly it made his chest burn and clog. They’d mentioned his husband’s name in the conversation; they knew exactly who they were looking for. Were they the ones who’d sent people after Lance? The reason he’d almost drowned? His husband’s hand closed tighter over his own and Keith could quite vividly feel the nerves coming off of him in waves, even without turning away again to look at his panicked expression.

Keith counted how many people there were again. Three. He could take three people. Flashing a narrowed stare back at Lance, one he intended as a warning to stay put, the knight tore his hand away from his husband’s hold and crept forward. He could stay by his wall of rocks until he hit an opening, then he could sprint to the closest tree. If he was fast, he could keep hidden long enough to surprise the enemies and take them down before they could hit him back. When he was nearing the end of the rocks, one of the strangers spoke again, this one in the same voice as that last question in Keith’s dream. So they’d been the one whose words got mingled with his nightmare in his quasi unconscious state.  “Who do you think is with him? It’s wasn’t a signature we recognized when they crossed the barrier.” The knight heard a gasp behind him when the second person had begun to speak.

“Keith, wait, don’t get closer. They’re not—” there was a clatter of metal as Lance stumbled after him and tripped over the chest plate Keith had left in the dirt. It was followed by a thud and three illumination spells aimed right where the brunet had hit the ground. Cussing, Keith pushed off his rocks and slid himself between the beams of light and his husband, accepting the blinding shine of magic and cursing how useless of a fighter it would likely make him. He was reduced to not much more than a shield, but he had to be. He was all that stood between Lance, crumpled across the dirt, and the approaching threats.

“Stay back!” He swung his sword in front of him in a threat as he heard footsteps quickly gaining on his and Lance’s position, making the spells burn his eyelids further. He batted his lashes like the swift movement would knock the light away from his view, but it hardly gave him any visibility of even the vague outlines of the newfound threats. It was easy to tell they were still getting closer, though, and he swung his sword again. “I said stay back!” He could hear Lance fumbling in the dirt behind him, scraping and scuffling to get back on his feet and likely to provide Keith with backup. Keith doubted he was well enough to use magic again, though.

There was a rattle as Lance accidentally nudged the chest plate again with his boot and the noise startled Keith enough for him to miss a spell being launched. He only noticed it when it splattered across his chest and made the area burn and smoke excruciatingly, the fire spell having caught his shirt aflame. Groaning, he stumbled a step back as he tried the pat the pain away by slapping his chest with his palm. In an instant, however, before he could even begin to warn against it, Lance was standing straight up and between the strangers and Keith. The knight tried to wedge a plea from his stomach, a cry for Lance to get back, but his chest ached too much to manage much of anything that resounded as existing words. “Veronica!” Keith stopped trying to speak at a name he recognized falling from Lance’s mouth. Where had he heard that name? His pain was too great to truly remember. “You ass!”

The illumination spells began to dim and Keith was finally able to pat out the pain and fire over his chest. As he did, there were thrilled shouts from the strangers, calls of Lance’s name, and a swarm of hugs that had Keith’s body aching at the restraint it took not to tear Lance away for his safety. It wasn’t safe. He wasn’t safe. Gods, Keith would do a lot just to have the constant reminders of that silence in his brain for longer than a second; they’d been loud in his ears for days. And now Lance seemed to be acting chummy with the strangers and it was even worse. Had he fallen under a mind control spell as Keith had the day before? There were only a few seconds of chatter before Lance waved him over and immediately someone, someone Keith didn’t know, had a spell healing the burns over his chest. His sword was lowered now, but his guard most certainly was not and he leveled harsh stares at everyone his husband was being friendly with. He placed his free hand atop Lance’s shoulder and bent to ask him what exactly was going on, his eyes still glued to three people he didn’t recognize, but before he could say anything, one of the three stepped forward.

A hand was placed, open palmed, in front of his chest and Keith narrowed a confused glare at it. “I’m Veronica,” the woman who’d stepped forward said, “Lance’s sister.” Keith’s hand slipped from Lance’s shoulder and his jaw fell in inch or so lower than what was typically socially acceptable upon meeting a sister-in-law. His hand had slapped against his thigh, but after it did, Veronica reached forward and grabbed it with the hand she’d held out earlier. “Sorry about… that,” she breathed, nodding her head at the now charred front of Keith’s shirt. He shook his head at the apology, too stunned to force a true reaction from his brain. Then it all hit him and shame roared in his ears and thudded against his chest. He’d aimed a sword at Lance’s sister. His first time meeting her and he’d threatened her. Not exactly a respectable way to make a first impression. In fact, the knight was quite certain he’d never been more humiliated in his life, though maybe that was merely because Lance’s family was a group he wanted so avidly to impress. A stutter of an apology rose as flustered steam from his gut, but Veronica continued her apology from earlier. “We have a barrier set up around the village and one end of it is at the river, so whenever someone crosses it, we know. It’s usually not worth coming to check out, but we have the barrier set up to read magic signatures, so when we recognized Lance’s and not yours, we thought you might be someone dangerous.”

“What, you thought I was ‘damsel in distress’ enough to get kidnapped? I’m offended,” Lance muttered, swinging forward to punch his sister’s shoulder lightly with a smile across his lips. Keith noted how he’d made his posture better than it had been before. How, when he laughed, he did so just a little too loudly, making the faint wheeze in his voice less noticeable. How his voice still shook like he was cold or scared or tired, despite how he tried to hide it. He was burying all his symptoms of having had his head underwater for too long. Perhaps he didn’t want his sister to know he’d almost drowned, though Keith couldn’t begin to contemplate why. It’s not as though she’d fault his swimming abilities when he’d quite literally been knocked unconscious. Unless, of course, Lance didn’t want her to know that either.

Choosing not to mention the facade Lance had put up, Keith joined the jovial tune of the conversation. With a light swing of his elbow into Lance’s side, the knight said, “I mean, can you blame her? Just six months ago—” Lance looked frantically up at him, an instantaneous sign for Keith to tug his mouth shut and to refrain from saying anything else on the matter. The group from Lance’s village watched the way Keith slammed his jaw closed and they did so with expectant, inquiring eyes. Keith sucked air in through his nose. “Ah,” he choked, “I lost my train of thought.” A lie. In fact, his train of thought was even more prevalent in his mind than it had been before because, gods, had Lance refrained from telling them about that, too? Did his family not know about the trauma he’d been through in the last year?

In accordance with that bewildered, terrified thought, there came the reappearance of the demon from Keith’s dream. Still bearing Lance’s face and clad in a bloody crimson, it stood—though only in Keith’s imagination—behind one of Veronica’s shoulders. Its nail tapped its neck twice, a reminder of Lance’s scar, as if to allude to what the demon had said before. Why hadn’t Lance told his family? _Wouldn’t do for people to know the head knight couldn’t even keep his own husband safe, after all._ Keith couldn’t help but to wonder if that was truly the reason, but he swatted the wonder away when the conversation switched again. Not to imply he was paying any attention to that either, though.

It was something about making it to Lance’s village as quickly as possible, he’d determined early on in the new topic, and in response to that, the group began a hasty trek to the town. No hesitation other than to swing past the duo’s makeshift campsite to snatch Keith’s chest plate. In their idle chatting, there were promises that everyone would be ecstatic to see Lance and thrilled to meet Keith. They made a smile twitch onto the head knight’s tired face, though the grin didn’t ever quite reach his eyes. Fell short every time because, no matter how the reassurance came, he figured it only natural to be nervous to meet his husband’s family for the first time. Worrying about Lance’s secrets to worrying about seeing the family he was keeping them from. It seemed Keith always had something to fret over because, while Veronica seemed keen enough on accepting him quickly, there was no guaranteeing the rest of the family would be the same. Sure, Keith was a respected man in Castle Town and he’d never heard nasty rumors about scandals involving him or anything else equally treacherous. Yet he’d never had the chance to hear what rode out of town on the lips of merchants and travelers; he had no way of knowing what things were said about him this far out in the desert.

Gods, to think he was more worried about this than he was concerned for the mission. Fighting he understood. Bringing the samples on his waist to people skilled enough to examine them was something he could work towards fathoming. The complexities of large families and the delicate norms and unspoken rules of social encounters, however, weren’t a language he was particularly fluent in. Staring into the sunrise, he silently wished to be burned alive in its flames before he had the chance to embarrass himself in front of Lance’s family. It would be far more merciful to die engulfed in the sun’s heat than it would be to die engulfed in his humiliated fluster when he inevitably made a complete and utter fool of himself, after all.

Alas, no such prayer was answered in his favor.

They’d all long since begun to move further west in pursuit of Lance’s home village and it had been even longer since Keith deemed it safe enough to tuck his sword away. He trusted Lance’s judgement to have faith in the group who walked with them. Not only did Lance trust them, but he also seemed eager to engage in friendly chatter with them and the conversation didn’t ever seem to halt, even as they walked. Veronica was catching Lance up on things he’d missed over the last few years and the other two group members were laughing along with the stories she told. Nieces and nephews wreaking havoc. Newborn cousins being more of a handful than anyone had bargained for. Food mishaps when the terrible cooks of the family tried their hands at something they definitely shouldn’t have. And Lance was laughing at those stories like the rest of the group for a while, but it didn’t take long before he noticed Keith wasn’t and his laughter slowed. Head turned to face Keith, he furrowed his brows at the nerves which were certainly visible on the knight’s face and tangible in his shaky breaths.

And so he stopped walking, bringing a hand to Keith’s wrist to urge him to do the same. The group pushed on, seemingly having failed to notice the pair’s meter of departure from their circle. “Hey,” Lance murmured, feeling Keith’s pulse thrum faster and harder under his fingertips about his wrist as he spoke. “You don’t have to be scared, okay? I promise.” Keith sucked a breath of air in, sharp and short, and he wore surprise on his features at having been figured out so easily. It was only a moment he wore that, though, and his head dipped shortly after, chin swinging to meet his neck as he ducked his gaze away from anywhere Lance could see. “They’re going to like you just fine.” Keith huffed.

“Am I that easy to read?” He lifted the arm Lance wasn’t holding and brought it to grip his other nervously in a way Lance was certain had the skin beneath Keith’s undershirt going white. His knuckles were white atop it. Lance didn’t try to pry that hand from where it had latched itself, but he did reach a hand up to tuck Keith’s hair behind one of his ears. It was something he always caught himself doing when he was feeling particularly tender and he hated that it was his go-to sign of pooling affection in his chest, but Keith never seemed to mind it. In fact, he leaned into the motion and shut his eyes, though not without some failed attempt at restraint flashing within those eyes first. He woke from his melted state in only a few seconds, however, and he turned back to the group that had slipped quite a ways ahead in the time they’d been dallying. “Nevermind,” he said gently. “We should catch up.” He tried to tear his face away, to chase after Veronica and the others, but Lance didn’t let his hold on Keith’s wrist falter.

“Not until you look at me, jerk.” And look at Lance he did. Lance was utterly ensnared by how Keith looked at him. Both of his deep, dark eyes bore into Lance’s, but they didn’t quite seem dark with the golden reflection of the sunrise across them. His jaw cut the rays of light like a knife. His hair was so endlessly ebony and shadowed, yet as he looked at Lance that morning, it was shining yellow and orange at the ends where the sun captured it. Ever the contradiction, that man was. His eyes flickered between a desperation to keep moving and a glow of being entirely and completely smitten with Lance and how the light undoubtedly caught on all of _him,_ too. Lance let out a shaky breath because that look probably wasn’t something he should have asked for. Married or not, that look was overwhelming. “I promise they’ll love you, Keith. You don’t have to worry about it.” He stood straighter and farther forward on his feet so he could reach Keith’s nose with his lips. The nervous and unsteady pulse beneath his thumb slowed to a normal pace. He fell from where he’d kissed the tip of Keith’s nose with a smile, knowing his words had somehow placated the doubts and fears in his husband.

When Lance pulled back, Keith followed and pushed their lips together. The kiss was short and gentle, so Lance only got a brief taste of the _thank you_ on Keith’s mouth. While he wanted to ask for more, he appreciated what he’d tasted. He laughed a little and Keith followed the sound with one of his own; for the first time since they’d joined a larger group, Keith’s smile reached his eyes. Lance kissed him chastely again, but he stumbled back instantly when he heard Veronica clear her throat loudly up ahead. “Look, I know not all of us have a sexy royal knight for a husband, but you don’t have to rub it in, Lance.” He wanted desperately to protest because, truly, he hadn’t been intentionally rubbing anything in, but he was too embarrassed to find words fast enough. “Save the excuses,” she interrupted his thoughts, “I know those goo-goo eyes.” She huffed. “Just don’t make out in front of Silvio and Nadia. They’ll gag.” Keith laughed at the order, his head falling back as he did. Perhaps it was a sign of just how much he needed that laugh; how easily his neck turned soft and let him show his emotions so plainly had to be a sign of something. Lance wanted to be embarrassed at being caught by his sister, maybe angry at how she’d called them out as she did, but a fiery complaint was no more than a wisp of smoke when he saw Keith laugh.

He was probably a god. He had to be. Keith was all shades of gold and of peaches and of apricots, rosy across the cheeks and lemon across his eyelashes as the sun beamed through them. He was a scattered array of softly colored fruits. There were mountains on the horizon and Lance swore Keith’s jaw and sharp nose and the rest of his defined features split the sunrise even better than those mountains did. Ah, but he still soaked the light in like the bank of a lake soaked in the splashing water. His eyes glittered when he stopped laughing and he turned to Lance with mirth and light swirling in his eyes like stars shooting across a violet and ebony sky. The emotion and the sun twirled together like dancers, spinning and spinning and dipping each other until Lance couldn’t tell what of the glow in Keith’s eyes was his happiness and what of it was the tangerine sunrise. He felt the grip he had of Keith’s wrist shift until their fingers were interlaced and he was being tugged to catch up with the group again. And as Keith pulled him along for the jog, he kept his dancing eyes on Lance. His hair split, half cupping the back of the knight’s head and half dusting across his cheeks and it turned the same bright, fruity colors as the horizon behind him. He looked warm, in all soft and loving senses of the word.

It seemed like the rest of the move to Lance’s village was spent with the brunet’s dry mouth trying to cup what few stuttering, failing words he could find in his vocabulary to describe Keith. None of them passed his lips and the smile upon those lips. In fact, he hardly participated in the conversation of the group as they walked because he was far too focused on how much better Keith looked when he was smiling and at ease, no longer terrified of everyone around him. Perhaps Lance was also thinking about how much better he looked with a sheen of sweat on his forehead and his upper lip, but you’d never hear him say it aloud. The damp ends of the knight’s hair, the tongue he used to sweep up the sweat over his mouth, no one would ever catch Lance uttering a word about them, though someone might catch him staring because that was all his eyes were being dragged to. Over and over. He figured he was due for another scolding from Veronica if he didn’t tear his eyes away before they reached the village and the kids saw him do it. He assumed it would be difficult to avoid her lecture.

Yet, when it looked to be around noon and he saw the peaks of roofs up ahead, when he saw familiar stone fences and a familiar arched entrance, it was easy. Because when he was hit with smells from his childhood, like lunches his mom used to make, and when he could catch a glimpse of where he used to run and play as a child through that stone archway, it was easy to get occupied in thoughts of that. It was hard to fight the urge to run forward, though. He wanted to sprint there; it was so close, after all. He felt impatience run its course through his veins and his hands started to tremble with excitement until Keith’s hand, which was still around Lance’s, gave an encouraging squeeze. Lance looked to him, this time with much difficulty because the town within view demanded a monopoly of his attention, but the pleasant smile on the knight’s face was all the nudge he needed to slip free of his husband’s grip and run the rest of the way to town.

Once he made it to the archway, he stood there, still for a moment. In a trance, he shut his eyes to listen to and to smell and to taste the nostalgia in the air. He probably looked like a fool, stance wide and eyes closed with his hair tossed about by a hot gust of air. A fool, sure, but at least a recognizable one because as he stood there, nose to the wind, he heard at least two shouts of his name at once. He didn’t have the chance to open his eyes before there were arms around his waist and smaller ones around his legs. Laughing, he fell back on the dirt. The people hugging him went, too. He could guess it was his niece and nephew squeezing him based off of how neither the arms around his thighs nor the ones around his waist were tall enough to reach an adult’s height, so he didn’t need to open his eyes. But he did, tilting his head back just in time to watch Keith jogging up with a smile that was halfway bewildered and halfway amused and halfway concerned. That made more than a whole, but Lance felt more than a whole like this anyway.

Keith knelt, one knee in the dirt and the other up. “You alright there, Lance?” It wasn’t a sincere question; Keith wasn’t so socially foolish as to be unable to read the joy in Lance’s eyes. He leaned one arm on his propped knee and the other of his arms lifted from where it had been in the dirt. With a brush of his fingers together, he freed his hand from dust and pulled some of Lance’s hair back from his forehead. The brunet grinned more because he could read the love in the action and the affection in Keith’s eyes. He was so much better than alright.

He felt the faces against his hips and stomach lift upon the utterance of Keith’s question, though, and the weights of his niece and nephew across his body were gone soon after. “Who are you?” Nadia and Silvio were standing now, eyes more curious than wary, but the latter existed in their gazes as well. Lance sat up and reached a palm out to ruffle some of Silvio’s hair affectionately. He almost got caught up in marvelling at how much older his niece and nephew looked and forgot entirely how to speak, but luckily Keith was fast enough to compensate.

“I’m Keith, I—”

The youngest of the siblings was stepping forward in an instant, her eyes wide with wonder and her mouth grinning. “Like, the head knight?” Nadia grabbed one of Keith’s hands, the one Keith had previously slid along Lance’s forehead and hairline, and she tugged it to her chest excitedly. Keith nodded at her question, an awkward chuckle on his lips as he did. The girl didn’t seem to mind and her hands grappled to the sheath about his waist next. “Whoa, that’s wicked. Can I hold your sword?” The knight shut his eyes and laughed, apparently thinking it was a question she asked purely in jest, but he opened his eyes in shock when the sound of metal blade scraping along metal sheath echoed in the previously quiet, desert air. Lance sighed because it sounded enough like the pots and pans in his mother’s kitchen to satisfy his need for sounds to accompany the smell of lunch in the air.

Nadia was probably just as heavy as the sword, so it had no chance of leaving its housing on Keith’s hip, but the knight protested her attempt regardless, terror in his voice at the prospect of her injuring herself. “Hey—”

“Wow, Uncle Lance, you’re friends with the head knight,” Silvio murmured, mindlessly interrupting Keith and prodding at one of Lance’s cheeks. Lance fell back to the dirt in a useless attempt to avoid the fingers on his skin, but Silvio followed. He’d bent right over with Lance, bewildered and poking at various points on Lance’s face. “How did you manage to do that?”

Lance curved his mouth into a smug grin, running a hand through his hair to finish the visual of someone bragging. “Actually, friend isn’t the half of it. Not to flex, but he’s my—oof!” Silvio stepped on Lance’s stomach in his haste to get to Keith like Nadia had, his question forgotten, by the looks of it. Lance pouted, only partially jealous that Keith was getting all the attention that afternoon. Keith looked like he’d much rather it be Lance at the center of attention, anyway; his eyes kept darting down to Lance’s in panic as the kids swarmed him. Silvio began to play with the ends of Keith’s hair and Lance watched his husband’s eyes harden with a resolve to put his hair up in a ponytail next time he got the chance. It gave him a smile that wrinkled the corners of his own.

Dragging a few locks of the hair over his head like it was his own, Silvio turned to Nadia with a pensive expression. “Should I grow my hair out like his?” Lance gave an indignant screech in protest to the mere thought of it. _His_ nephew? With that atrocious haircut? Over his dead body. Throwing himself into a sitting position again, Lance spun his body around to pull Silvio away from Keith and his hair. “Uncle Lance! Stop it!” But the boy was giggling and Lance gave a few goofy pecks to the top of his head through a toothy grin. Silvio fell into his lap with a happy screech.

Meanwhile, Nadia was far from stopping her mischief and she grabbed Keith’s cheeks in her hands. The knight was, needless to say, startled and slightly uncomfortable with the stern stare the child could pull off and level with him. He looked like he regretted kneeling within her reach as much as he’d regretted having his hair down with Silvio earlier. His second knee hit the ground as well and he gently peeled her fingers from his cheeks. “How many people have you killed, Mr. Keith?” The man’s eyes went wide and flew to Lance, whose nose was wrinkled with his attempt to keep his laughter tucked away in his stomach. The brunet provided no assistance in how to answer that question.

“I,” Keith began, turning back to Nadia with furrowed brows. He swallowed, then licked his lips. “How old are you again?” The knight tilted his head and grinned falsely. “I don’t think you’re old enough to—” her eyes turned more pleading; Lance could tell, even though the girl was facing the other way, because Keith’s words died on his tongue. He turned to Lance again, but once again received no help, the brunet merely smiling and winking. Keith’s narrowed eyes practically told Lance, _the count’s going to go up by one, if you don’t watch it._ Luckily, Veronica took mercy on the knight and gave him a hand.

Bending over and slipping a hand under each of Nadia’s armpits, she picked the girl up and carried her back into town. “C’mon, kid, let’s leave him alone.” Silvio hopped from Lance’s lap and scurried after the pair, the two other members of their travelling group following not long after that. Keith sighed at the increased solitude and, patting the dust off his legs, stood himself up. Lance placed his hands behind him and rocked back, though, far from ready to stand up. He heaved a hearty, pleased sigh and shut his eyes to once again absorb the nostalgia of his home town with his remaining senses.

By the time he was ready to reopen his eyes—by the time he’d gotten his fill of the familiar scent of pollen from blooming desert trees and the sounds of chirping birds and rustling branches—Keith was standing in front of him with an unbearably fond look. Tender, softhearted eyes. The look he always seemed to get on his face when Lance did something endearingly foolish, though now he hadn’t done anything of the sort and he was proud to have elicited such a warm response regardless. Seeing Lance was ready to move forward and that his need to be patient was at an end, the knight let his hand fall in front of him as an offer. Lance accepted it and let his husband pull him up, though perhaps a little too eagerly because he clonked his nose against the chestplate in front of him. Wouldn’t be the first time it happened. He was about to ask if the sloppy assistance had been because Keith was still nervous about meeting people, because often nerves were the reason Lance hit his chest like that, but when he took his nose off of the warm metal and faced his husband, Keith looked utterly flabbergasted. His Adam’s apple bobbed in a dry swallow while his eyes locked somewhere over the brunet’s shoulder. Before he could ask about that, either, there was another call of his name.

Not Silvio or Nadia here to pester Keith again, for it wasn’t preceded by the word _Uncle._ Not Veronica coming back to urge them into town finally, for Lance could hear her voice elsewhere, farther from the archway he was under. No, Lance knew whose voice it had been. Tearing his hand from Keith’s in a way his husband surely would have been insulted by, had it not been for the circumstances, he turned on his heel. He did so far too hastily and only stayed upright because Keith steadied his stance with palms to his shoulder blades, but seeing the owner of that voice looking just the same as she had when she came to his wedding made his ankles turn sturdy again in an instant. Lance darted forward.

His mother had a tray of food balanced on one hand and she barely managed to maneuver it out of the way of Lance’s incoming hug. His father was behind the woman and he walked around her to join the hug almost as fast as Lance had made it. On the brink of joyous tears, the brunet almost missed the heavy footsteps of his husband as he followed Lance, albeit at a slower pace. So, when Lance finally let his parents out of his tight hug, he was surprised to see Keith had taken the tray of food from his mother’s hand in an effort to be polite. Lance smiled and swung an arm around Keith’s waist, after taking a few steps back to be next to him. He knew the knight wouldn’t have as much trouble making a good impression as he’d been worried he would, and his helpful gesture proved Lance had been correct.

Keith mirrored Lance’s hold around the small of his back as the brunet grinned and began to speak. “Mom, I know you’ve met Keith, but you,” Lance narrowed a playful glare at his father, “haven’t had the pleasure.” The knight’s posture jerked to something more professional and he took his arm away from Lance’s back when Lance’s father reached a hand out for a handshake. Lance tried not to grin, lest it give his husband away, when he felt him rub the sweat on his palm off against Lance’s leather armor. The shake came with a stiffly polite greeting—stiff mainly due to Keith’s inability to be anything else around strangers—but all in all, it was a relatively solid handshake and it seemingly made a good enough impression on Lance’s father because he was all smiles and laughter with Keith after it was finished.

With the greetings out of the way and with Keith thoroughly accepted by a total of five of Lance’s family members currently, the couple was invited to join the lunch the family was about to have. Lance’s mother made a joke about Keith having already invited himself by grabbing the tray of their food and while Keith flustered and attempted to pass it back to her, the woman clearly spoke without an ounce of malice in her voice. Swinging an elbow into Keith’s hip—one that normally wouldn’t have made him budge, but one that nearly sent him toppling over and dropping their lunch because of how nervous he was—Lance curled his chin to his neck and laughed again. Yet he ultimately denied the lunch invitation, or at the very least delayed it, because he’d made a promise to his husband that he’d get medical attention and he wasn’t about to let Keith get out of it either. Though he omitted the part about promises when explaining the situation to his parents. Nonetheless, Lance’s father hastily took the tray from Keith’s hands and his mother whisked the duo away to a nearby building, insisting they kept doctors near the entrance of the village for that very reason.

Now, it’s important to note that there was a lot about Lance’s childhood the brunet had eagerly spilled to his husband. But it is, simultaneously, important to note that there was a lot he’d skipped over and one fact he’d done the latter with was the fact in which he might mention just how important and influential Lance’s family was in their village. So, as Lance entered the medical building and was immediately greeted with an entire room full of people who instantly knew his name and who eagerly showed him every sign of respect, he fully expected the shocked look that flitted across Keith’s features. It had begun even before then, when Lance got the same treatment from people they passed in the street, but by the time they were sat on a cot in the medical building for a once over, Keith looked about at his peak of surprise for the day. He’d barely managed to wrestle his hair up into a ponytail—as Lance had read in his eyes was his plan before—without dropping his hair band in shock.

Lance’s mother waited by the door and the doctor walked away to grab something, so they were left alone a moment and Keith leaned over to murmur against Lance’s ear. “I’m sorry, did you somehow forget, in our _years_ of marriage and in the literal _days_ we talked on our way here, to mention how everyone here knows you? Like, by name?” Lance rolled his eyes then flashed an unassuming and unindicative-of-their-previous-conversation smile when the doctor returned with a spellbook that was hand marked with the word _checkups._ The doctor was a woman who looked a little nervous in a way Lance doubted was because she was new to her job—he knew the face of someone eager to impress—but she smiled back and got to work on casting spells from her book. She waved her hand once over Keith’s sitting form and Lance laughed at the way he wrinkled his nose at the unfamiliar method of receiving checkups; the spell did tend to feel weird when someone wasn’t used to it. Despite the wince, he was given the all clear in an instant. She moved onto Lance next, her hand waving just as quickly, but his all clear wasn’t on the way.

Lance groaned as the back of his head, specifically where he’d been hit with the branch the day before, began to flash an incriminating red; he groaned only because it left his mother gasping in the doorway and the doctor scurrying off to get something else. “Alright,” Lance muttered, since he and Keith were somewhat alone again. “I know I didn’t tell you that my family is, like, the head family around here, but does it really matter?” He leaned back on his hands, as though he could hide the flashing of his head by moving it closer to the sheets of the cot he and Keith were on. It gave him an air of calmness he didn’t really feel with how his mother was frantically asking questions about his health from her spot just outside. The doctor left those inquiries unanswered and instead shuffled through her cabinets which, given the magical adeptness of the village, served as not much more than bookshelves. Lance envied her ability to remain unbothered by his mother’s panic.

“Yes, it matters,” Keith answered. “I would have been a lot more nervous if I had known I had to impress an entire village of people and not just your family!” Lance gave him an exasperated look that he hoped read as the, _and that’s exactly why I didn’t tell you,_ he was feeling. Keith seemed to understand the look and he changed the course of his complaint. “Does this mean I have to call you, uh I dunno, prince? Or something?” Lance’s cheeks had begun to seem almost as bright a red as the back of his skull, though he didn’t have a spell to blame it on. It was a mix of embarrassment and vexation. He narrowed his already frustrated look. “Oh, I meant that in a genuine way, not as some pet name,” Keith said, grinning a little into the palm he’d brought to his lips. Lance wouldn’t have been surprised if Keith later revealed that the whole conversation had been a ploy to get to that joke and to enact a new, cruel, and downright derisive nickname.

Bringing one hand under each of his eyes, Lance huffed. “It’s a no either way, Keith. My social status in a single village literally changes nothing, so don’t go and be a tease about it.” Keith looked like he was going to say something else akin to a mocking word or a teasing phrase, but the doctor came back and he settled for another grin behind his hand. The woman had a new spellbook in her hands, this one marked _head injuries,_ and Lance was quick to tilt his head forward so she could reach the spot she needed to heal. A wave of her hand and, just like Keith earlier, Lance was red-free and given the all clear. Lance pushed himself off the cot and the rattle of Keith’s armor told him the knight had done the same a few seconds after. He passed a hushed word of gratitude to the doctor on his way to the door and he waited for Keith to catch up and exit before he passed through it. Keith made it to the door and seemingly had his own ideas, however.

“No, no.” A laugh was seeping into his tone. “After you,” he said and, as Lance begrudgingly accepted the polite gesture and as his ear was close enough to Keith’s lips to hear a whisper, he added, “prince.” Lance was glad his mother hadn’t heard, but his ears still went pink. _That little shit._ He grabbed Keith’s hand with a smile as they made their way to lunch, a cruelly adorable method of hiding vengeance, and he squeezed where their fingers were intertwined until he heard one of Keith’s knuckles pop. The knight bit his lip; he hated having his knuckles cracked, particularly by other people. Lance grinned and stopped squeezing as hard as he was.

When they made it to the lunch they’d been invited to earlier, it seemed everyone had waited the few minutes the checkup took to start eating. Lance also noticed how two mismatched chairs were tugged up to the table they were circled around, opposite his grandparents. Assuming they were for him and Keith, he tossed himself sloppily into one, while Keith lowered himself carefully into the other; his caution was likely an attempt to keep his armor from making a clatter, but if that was the case, it failed royally. Silvio and Nadia were seated next to Keith and they waved enthusiastically at him, ignoring the food they’d yet to touch on their plates. Lance gave a brief introduction of the people around the circumference of the table for Keith before his mother sat down and everyone finally began to chatter and eat. Lance cracked his knuckles—Keith gave him a betrayed look at the memory it elicited—and dug into the only thing he’d put in his stomach since he’d thrown up the day before.

Somehow, his mother’s cooking was even better than he’d remembered it and he finished the meal in record speed. Everyone else finished quickly as well, though they did so with the intent of diving fully into conversation with Lance and Keith. They likely, if Lance judged the following barrage of questions correctly, wanted to catch up on everything they’d missed from Lance in the years he’d been away, though they did want to know a lot about Keith, too. Lance feared that, at some point, he’d have to finish his thought of Keith being his husband for his niece and nephew, as well as provide the answers to the questions they threw at him after the fact. Yes, he’d gotten married, and yes, he’d neglected to invite them to the wedding, and no, it wasn’t because he didn’t love them. No amount of knowledge about the waterworks such a conversation would elicit could diminish the migraine they’d undoubtedly give him. Yet, luckily enough, it seemed someone else around the table had already had that conversation with them while the couple was away because Silvio and Nadia had begun to tack an endearing title of _Uncle_ onto the start of Keith’s name. Lance was relieved, immensely so, and he didn’t miss the smile that inched its way onto Keith’s face at the nickname, either.

Not everything around the table was going as swimmingly as it seemed, though, since Keith was wringing his hands under the tablecloth. Lance was about to give him a concerned look or to reach a comforting hand out and grasp his whitening knuckles, but Nadia beat him to it. Knocking her knuckles twice on the armor over Keith’s shoulders, she shot wide, begging eyes at the head that turned to face her in response. The knight swung an arm over the back of his chair so he could face her more fully, but that was all the invitation the girl needed to step over the armrest of her own chair and plop herself atop Keith’s lap. The conversation around the table didn’t slow, no one strayed from the topic of one of Lance’s stories of Castle Town, and it seemed like no one had even noticed the subtle change in the seating arrangement. But Lance watched in horror when Keith sucked a frightened, confused gasp of air in as Nadia slung her arms about his neck and smiled up at him. Lance was, once again, seconds away from reaching a comforting touch out to him, but something visibly clicked for Keith when Nadia tilted her head forward to rest along his chestplate. His shoulders relaxed and he finally smiled back, as if the entirety of how children worked, how to deal with them, and the complexities of Lance’s family made complete sense to him in that exact moment. He let his hand ruffle the hair behind her head and his own head ducked to brush his nose happily over her scalp.

And, Gods, Lance swore his heart stopped beating in the best possible way. He’d always thought Keith was a handsome guy. He’d always thought he was lucky three hundred times over, luckier in this one lifetime than he deserved to be in a _million_ lifetimes, luckier as one man than so many men got to be, even in a group with their luck pooled between them. But never was there a time he thought Keith more beautiful, considered himself to be luckier, or loved the man who wore his duplicate wedding ring more than he did in that exact moment. It was the happiest moment of his life to date. You’d think it would have been the moment he’d woken up to seeing his husband inches away after he’d been captured and beaten for days. You’d think it would have been the day they’d gotten married and he’d gotten to see Keith with a blue tie and flower, despite blue being Lance’s self proclaimed color, just so Keith could, in his own words, show how Lance completed him. You might even think it would have been when he and Keith had first kissed or had sex or, gods, any of the many milestones he’d been through with Keith. And, yes, those milestones had each made Lance fall deeper and deeper in love, but if you thought any of those could so much as _begin_ to compete with seeing Keith melting and molding right into the position of caring for a child, you would ultimately be so utterly and completely wrong it would send you reeling.

Because Keith, the one with soft eyes and bunched cheeks, was positively heartstopping. Because Keith, the one with shining hair falling loose of his ponytail and fingers that didn’t care to tuck it away from where it fell across his face because cupping the back of the child in his arms was worlds more important, was absolutely radiant. Because Keith, the one with a watery stare that turned to Lance as if to excitedly exclaim how thrilled he was to have gained the trust of someone so small and so frail and so breakable, was thoroughly entrancing. Because Keith, the one who wore Lance’s duplicate wedding ring and the one who cherished him so wholeheartedly every day of their lives with an obvious intent of letting Lance know how much he was loved, was undisputedly the only man Lance would resolve to love so wholly and achingly because how could he ever love another again after being blessed with a sight so endearing and with a husband so sublime?

But soon enough the moment, as it was, ended. The conversation stirred back to life—though truly it had never died down, Lance had just been too focused on Keith to listen to it—and Nadia stood with a foot on either of Keith’s thighs with a frown. “Your armor is uncomfy,” she said, knocking on the front of Keith’s chestplate for emphasis, as though she knew what emphasis was. And then she placed a foot on Keith’s armrest as leverage. Keith scrambled to put a hand in front of her stomach so she didn’t fall, but she ignored it and stepped over to Lance, setting herself in his lap instead. Keith wore a face that was a little betrayed and a little bitter at Lance, but there was also a hint of an obsession with Lance. Perhaps with how he looked cradling a child in his arms. Keith’s face wasn’t left turned to Lance for more than a moment and his lap wasn’t left empty for longer than a second, however. Silvio was quick to occupy the space his sister left, this time without the complaints of comfort or its absence. Keith was just as satisfied by that—a smile that said he was more than a little pleased with himself was stretched across his face—and Lance almost had another staring episode.

Luckily for his eyesight and his dignity, a few minutes passed and the kids fell asleep where they were. Thus, Keith began to participate in the conversation as usual once more, like he wasn’t thrilled to have a nephew—because yes, technically Silvio was just as much his nephew as he was Lance’s—taking a nap with a face against his chest plate. Truly, it was the happiest Lance had seen Keith since they left Castle Town. Well, maybe not happier than when Lance woke up from almost drowning, but he couldn’t say for sure, since everything had been a little blurry aside from the feeling of emptying his stomach. Point being, though, Keith seemed thrilled at the table.

Until he hadn’t.

Soon, he was back to wringing his hands, though this time he did so over Silvio’s back, and soon his nervous eyes were focusing on those grappling hands. Lance had the chance to ask him what was bothering him without Nadia stealing his thunder this time, at least. Leaning his head closer to Keith, but not the rest of him because Nadia was very much unconscious across him and he wasn’t about to risk waking her up, Lance furrowed his brows and whispered under the rise and fall of everyone else’s conversation. “What’s wrong?” Keith didn’t seem startled by Lance having figured him out and he merely wrinkled his nose.

“I don’t think your grandma likes me very much.” Lance thought it preposterous for such a thing to be possible. Keith hadn’t made a single social mistake since getting to town, so why wouldn’t she like him? Yet she did seem to be sending a small frown his way every now and then, so Keith’s observation appeared to be correct after all. She’d been thrilled to hear about Lance dating Keith and she’d been thrilled to hear they were getting married; she’d mentioned as much in a letter she’d written personally to Lance upon hearing the news. So why wouldn’t she like him now? Was it his looks? He was a handsome guy, a real catch in Lance’s opinion, so probably not. Keith’s hair was ugly, sure, but that wouldn’t warrant a seal of grandma’s disapproval.

“Hm.” Lance wracked his brain as he gave the short hum. He mindlessly watched one of his aunts, his mother’s significantly younger sister, walk up to the table with her newborn child and as though the scene was an omen, it hit him. “Hey, Keith. How long have we been married?” The knight turned to him with an almost insulted frown on his face. “No, no, I know. I just mean, like, it’s been a pretty decent amount of time.” Keith nodded. “Like, years amount of decent.” Keith nodded again, not understanding the flick of Lance’s head to the child nearby. “Like, most people would have kids by this point amount of time.” And this time the nod didn’t come. “My grandma always talked about living long enough to see my kids, so maybe she’s mad that there are no kids in the picture.”

“Why is she mad at _me?_ It’s not like I chose for us both to be guys. What am I supposed to do, disobey human biology?” He was huffing, but Silvio stirred in his lap and he switched to quieter whispers. “It’s not _my_ fault.”

“Adoption is a thing. You know that, right?” Keith turned to Lance with annoyance half baked on his features. “Okay, well, either way. Maybe she’s just mad because you clearly don’t know what you’re doing with Nadia and Silvio, so she thinks you’re not ready? This whole kid thing may not even be why she’s mad. Maybe she doesn’t care that we haven’t adopted kids yet,” he winced as it slipped out, “and it’s something else.” Lance choked upon finishing his thought. He’d said it. Gods, he’d said _yet._ They hadn’t talked about kids; he had no place using that word. His blood was too hot in his chest and he prayed Keith had somehow missed the slip up. “Maybe you just have food on your face and she’s hoping you’ll notice if she glares at you,” he breathed, far weaker than intended, but he was too nervous to manage something stronger.

He didn’t dare lift his head, he didn’t dare look up from where Nadia sat on his lap. Maybe if he didn’t look up, Keith would somehow not notice how red his ears had gotten. Maybe he’d forget that damned word. “Yet?” Lance clenched his jaw because, fuck, he’d caught it. “You want kids,” Keith said. And it had no emotion. It was a pure statement, no feelings attached, and Lance swore he would be sick. He still didn’t lift his head; he wanted to lean it on the table and cover his blushing ears. “You want kids?” Lance didn’t look at him; he had to fight off every instinct to because he was so brilliant to look at and with a kid on his lap, he would be perfect and he would match the current conversation. “With me?” Lance wanted to roll his eyes because, despite his embarrassment, it was idiotic to think he’d meant with anybody else. Certainly, tons of people looked at someone as handsome and as strong and as influential as Keith and wanted to have kids with him. He must have random women on the street stopping him daily to ask, right? Surely his own husband wanting the same wasn’t _that_ unusual. “You want kids!” The brunet finally managed to look at Keith, as well as the near proud and loving shine in his eyes, and his stomach suddenly didn’t feel as ill as it had before. The smile on Keith’s face was almost comparable to being excited. Unfortunately, everyone else had turned to see that same grin upon hearing Keith shout about kids. Struggling to explain away why he’d yelled about children to his husband’s family, since Lance remained too embarrassed to cover for him, the knight went pink. “I mean, argh! Kids, gotta love ‘em! Their tiny, uh, feet and their little, baby fingers are so cute. I’ve always wanted a bunch!” Pointing his gaze back to his lap, Lance snorted a little because what a liar. Lance was pretty sure Keith hadn’t even _seen_ a kid up close until he met Silvio and Nadia a few hours prior.

Whispering so only Keith, and perhaps Nadia and Silvio if they’d been awake, could hear, Lance said, “Keith, I didn’t mean to—you don’t have to—” but Keith’s hand was clasped over Lance’s wrist before he could finish saying what exactly Keith didn’t have to do and suddenly Lance had forgotten what it was he was advising against. Didn’t have to talk about kids with his family if he didn’t want, was it? Didn’t have to please his grandma if it meant he was doing something he didn’t want, perhaps. Didn’t have to lie about wanting kids, probably. But when Lance lifted his head, trailing his eyes slowly up the arm attached to his own at the wrist, he realized he didn’t have to advise against any of that because deep in Keith’s eyes, he could see it. Keith _did_ want. It wasn’t a lie, it wasn’t to please—because, after all, pleasing people was never something Keith cared too greatly for doing, especially at his own expense and for something as petty as being liked—and it most certainly wasn’t a topic he wanted out of. The hand of his that wasn’t around Lance’s arm was bunched in the fabric at the back of Silvio’s shirt and the hold was nothing short of a sign of excitement. His eyes crinkled much like the fabric of that shirt. “Wait,” Lance could feel his own pulse in his fingertips and on his cheeks and at the end of his nose and along the insides of his ears and atop the back of his tongue. Still too quiet and with lip movements too small for anyone other than his husband to notice, Lance gave a miniscule, wary smile and spoke again. “You meant that?”

Both to address the question Lance had quietly asked and to address the silence that had fallen over the table, Keith smiled, turned back to the group, and spoke again. “I didn’t have much of a family growing up. It’s about time I seized the opportunity to make up for lost time,” he swiveled his head to lock a tender gaze with Lance, furrowed eyebrows and all, “yeah?” And the smile on his lips, the squint of his eyes, was so sincere, so inarguably genuine, Lance didn’t even question whether or not he’d said it merely because Lance wanted him to. He knew Keith meant it with every fiber of his being. The brunet echoed the last word with certainty, as an answer. Keith’s hand slipped further and Lance’s rose up, so they both met in the middle with palms pressed together and fingers tangled together, instead of around Lance’s wrist. When they turned back to the group, everyone looked as though they’d completely understood something intimate had been settled in those quiet, small moments. No one said a word about it, though, and Lance’s grandma was smiling. Perhaps it was never about the kids, Lance considered. Perhaps it had been the teamwork needed to raise them she’d been looking for. His grandma hardly seemed the type to dislike anyone for something shallower than that.

The table caught on the topic of kids quickly, though, and Lance’s aunt got fully drawn into the conversation. Words were happy and roaring again, no one was scowling at Keith, and the knight was smiling all the way to his eyes and probably to his stomach, too. Lance could feel _his_ happiness in his stomach, after all, and he thought Keith’s eyes looked as happy as his own felt. Silvio woke up at some point and crawled out of Keith’s lap in search of his mother somewhere around the table. When he left, Lance’s newborn cousin was quickly offered to take his place and Keith eagerly accepted. The knight listened to every direction on how to hold the baby with an agreeableness Lance couldn’t believe. Lance’s heart swelled and he allowed himself to get drunk off the feeling because the sight of Keith so proud to cradle a child was even more of a reality than it had been before. That same happy gaze he’d flung at Lance because of Nadia before came again and Lance allowed himself to fully smile back because that gaze was sincere and truly for him now. He was permitted the contentedness in his gut and chest. And as Keith wrinkled his nose and puckered his lips at the baby, the mother laughed and Lance felt faint. He could have that. He could go home and achieve that with Keith. And if Lance did it, too, if he got that same sappy, heartstoppingly fond look on his face, Keith could have that. And he wanted that.

Lance was putty in his chest and on his smiling lips.

He shut his eyes again to soak in all those other senses again. The smell of lunch, clinging to the air long after they’d finished it. The smell of Keith, the scent natural and faint next to Lance, but just as nostalgic as everything else around him. The feel of his niece breathing in such a way that her air brushed across his arm. The sound of her snores. The sound of his mother’s voice and his father’s laughter. The sound of something new, of Keith’s baby voice as he continued to be a surprising natural at handling newborns. The coos of his cousin in response, small and sweet and entirely attainable.  

The moment was perfect and he wanted to live in it forever.

But it was only that—a moment—so it ended accordingly.

Lance heard his mother clear her throat and it was the bell that tolled at the end of an hour, the sound that ended the moment they were in.

“So, to what do we owe the pleasure of your visit, Lance?”

And Lance began to remember just how much of a moment it all was. His breathing turned shallow and he hoped it was more imperceptible than it felt. Nadia didn’t stir, so he figured it wasn’t starkly obvious. But he still felt like he was panicking, just as close to drowning as he’d been a day ago. The scar under the cloth over his neck, how he got it, how that hell was far from over, how they were here on a mission, and how his life was, no matter how he wished to deny it, in clear danger. Gods, he’d forgotten it all in the moment. He looked to Keith for an answer, too dry in his mouth and too heavy in his stomach to even consider responding to his mother. His eyes were wandering and desperate; he didn’t even need to see his reflection to know as much. Keith passed the infant back to the mother, who’d been hanging around behind him to give advice, and he reached a newly emptied hand to the vials on his waist. He unclasped both and placed them on the tablecloth. They clinked and rolled for a few moments, everyone watching, then the knight spoke.

“We were attacked by our army the other night.”

The startled, concerned, and infuriated responses were instantaneous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so like? Everyone spells Lance's nephew's name Sylvio but I went back and watched an episode in which he's mentioned and the subtitles spelled it Silvio so that's why I went with that. Maybe in another episode it was with a y, but idk  
> btw AAAAAAAA  
> anyway, I hope you enjoyed Lance being smitten and wanting kids and Keith having anxiety-induced nightmares.  
> Also, I'm not sure if my transitions of Keith being awake to dreaming and then awake again were understandable (I'm the only one proofreading this thing, aside from excerpts I give my friends because I'm particularly proud of them), so lemme know if that and the POV change were okay! (EDIT: I added a paragraph and a half to remedy the dream entrance a bit. I hope it helps!)  
> Let me know what you thought in general in the comments, too! <3  
> also! If you enjoyed, be sure to leave a kudo cuz those are what keep me motivated to write this thing!


	7. Up and Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaa it’s ben so long!! Sorry I haven’t been able to keep up with my weekly update schedule, work has been hectic 😷  
> Accordingly, I’ve decided I can’t really promise weekly updates anymore. So, I suggest you follow my tumblr (it’s also cakepopple and you can find a link on my profile page) instead! I’ll try to post sneak peeks and stuff there!  
> Anywho! Enjoy this THICC update!

“I mean,” Keith looked as though he’d been made ill by all the ruckus that stirred in response to his sentence and he choked a little on the words he tried to get out. “Not us personally. The entire Altean castle.” More questions bubbled from the lips of people around the table. Veronica’s question isolated itself and hushed the rest of the outraged murmurs. 

“Your own army? As in, a coup?” Likely assuming the news meant the downfall of the Altean monarchy, Lance’s mother drew a hand over her lips in a silent fret. Lance watched Keith shake his head, then the resulting unified exhale of relief across the table that followed. “Then how does something like that happen?” Veronica drummed four fingers across the table, looking beyond irritated in a way Lance could probably chalk up to how they’d only just now mentioned such an integral part of their recent life. She had spoken a little too loudly and now Nadia’s face had lifted from across Lance’s collarbones to stare quizzically and tiredly up at him. There was both a lack of understanding and a total knowledgeableness in her eyes, like she understood the tone of voice she’d woken up to, though not the context in which it had been used. Lance, though still a little shaken from the whirlwind of everything he’d been forced to remember so suddenly, placed a palm atop her head and ruffled her hair. Meanwhile, it seemed both Lance and Keith were waiting for the other to answer and silence fell over the group in expectation of one of them taking the brunt of Veronica’s pointed question. 

Lance looked up from Nadia and at his sister and willed his voice to project. “Mind control spells, we think. That’s why we came here. To see if you could tell us who cast it, or if it’s even a mind control spell at all, or whatever lead you can figure out.” He jerked his chin at the vials Keith had tossed atop the tablecloth. “They’re blood samples from two of the soldiers who attacked the castle.” His voice shook at the end, when Nadia shifted against him, reaching her hands up around his neck and crumpling the turtleneck of his undershirt in her fists. It made the skin of his scar itch. “This is all we really have to go off of.”

Veronica stood and reached over the table, and the dirty dishes scattered along it, to snatch one of the samples into her hand. Rocking back into her seat, she rolled it in her palm for a moment, glaring at the way its dark liquid coated the inner walls of the vial. Just barely transparent the glass was then. Like the stone-faced veil she kept her frustration hidden under. “You should have started with this. It’s a matter of national safety,” she scolded, wrapping her fingers tightly around the vial and standing upright again. Yet, despite the air of certainty and authority in which they were spoken, Lance doubted her words. After all, if the mind controlled soldiers’ devotion to Lotor was any indication, it likely wasn’t Altea, or its riches, or even its queen that the unnamed enemies were after because Lotor had never been after any of those. Even if the attack was a form of vengeance for his death—or rather, his disappearance—it wouldn’t be the kingdom they were after; it would be Keith, as he’d been the one to strike the final blow. Or what was speculated to be the final blow, at least. Furthermore, if the mind control was to be the concern of the kingdom, the attacks likely would have come once again at the castle, rather than following Lance and Keith out and into the desert. The enemy forces had to have followed the duo away because if the castle been attacked again, Queen Allura surely would have sent a message to Lance and Keith out in the desert. She had libraries full of spellbooks that would contain ways to do so. There was no reason for her silence other than peace in Castle Town or her death. A message would have come if her lack of communication was due to the latter, too, however.

So, yes, Lance doubted his sister’s claim of national emergency greatly. He wasn’t about to say as much, though, lest he encourage more wrath in her voice. He twiddled his thumbs above Nadia’s back while Veronica rolled the vial around in her palm more. And then she sighed. With another swift bend over the table, she took the other sample into her hand. “Alright, I’ll get these to someone who can examine them.” She flicked her eyes at where the sun was only an hour or two above the horizon. “I doubt it’ll be ready before nightfall, though.” Thus she turned, looking peevish and antsy, and scuttered down a dirt road to someone who could, allegedly, fill in the blanks of what was happening. 

Conversation remained stagnant for only a second or two after that. Then Lance’s mother was asking all sorts of questions about the attack, hands all white knuckles on the table in front of her. She asked first if the injury Lance had come to town with was from that attack. Lance wanted to say no, because that was the truth, but with everyone watching and staring and expecting and worrying, he said yes. Because that was easier to explain than how he’d been attacked yet again after the fact. How it resulted in him almost drowning. He could feel Keith’s glare on his cheek and he could see it in his peripheral at the lie he’d given as an answer, but his husband didn’t refute his claim. No, he didn’t say anything on the matter at all. Next, his mother had asked if Keith was alright and the knight had smiled at the care in her voice. After that, the pleasantries were over and she started to grope for information on the spells they suspected had been in use during the attack. She asked if the attacking soldiers had moved awkwardly or if they’d had any peculiar facial expressions. When Lance and Keith both answered to the negative, to not having noticed anything of the sort, she posed a question on if those soldiers had said anything. Lance was certain the way he and Keith both denied the inquiry simultaneously, hurriedly, and with dry lips gave the lie away in an instant. If it did, though, no one said anything of it. 

Those two hours between the sun and the horizon that Veronica had observed earlier were whiled away before anyone thought to start dinner, so the group went without it. Someone swung by the kitchen and grabbed fruit for everyone at some point, though. Lance’s orange sat untouched in front of him; the present conversation had stirred anxiety in his gut from all the upkeep of his lies and he’d long since lost his ability to develop an appetite for anything. Keith apparently was less than fond of that, since he grabbed the orange himself and unpeeled it, before he set it back in front of Lance. A silent nudge for Lance to eat something, given between the pressing questions in their current conversation. Lance sighed. There were, in accordance with Keith’s assistance, scrapes of the peels of  _ two _ oranges on the knight’s leftover plate from lunch. So, having seen how his husband had managed to wrestle his own orange down, Lance did the same. Little by little and between answers of his mother’s questions, but at least Keith seemed pleased. 

The questions eventually ended and by that point, it was well into nighttime. All the light around them came in a waxy, soft yellow from the glow of candles in nearby buildings. Most of the people in the village had retired to their houses for the evening and Lance thought the change in sound—with no town chatter, no shouts of vendors nearby, and no laughter of children running about—left an opening for different nostalgic noises. The only impactful sound came from Lance’s mother, who was engaging in a discussion with the other people around the table, trying to decipher what the information they’d been given about the attack could mean. Figuring he had a moment he could afford to neglect listening, Lance tuned his hearing instead to the rustle of things in nearby houses, the quietude he could never find in the nights he spent in Castle Town. There was a laugh somewhere farther into town, a joyous note in response to some late night joke and though he could feel the air get colder around his cheeks, it was hard to be bothered by it when the sounds made him feel so at home. Ah, it was everything he remembered it being and, as he looked at Keith next to him, it was more. So, so much more. 

Lance’s mother cleared her throat to address the whole group. “I think it’s time we all head to bed,” she said and, smiling at Lance, she added, “it’s been a very eventful day.” The brunet smiled and pushed his chair out from the table, hearing how everyone else around the dinner table had the same idea at varying times. Like a bag of marbles dropped and spilled upon the floor, everyone scattered, some slow and some fast, and went their own ways to where they’d sleep for the night. Nadia caught onto the commotion and clambered off of Lance’s lap fairly quickly. Everyone took their dishes to the kitchen during their relocation.

What they left behind, however, was something Lance couldn’t describe. Something in the pit of his stomach, something tangible and large and lumpy, something that had him drawing his bottom lip between his teeth nervously. He winced at the lingering taste of food on his lips because he suddenly had even less appetite than before. The mere idea of food had his stomach twitching all the way up to the back of his tongue until he felt as though he was about to gag. And there was a sting behind his eyes, worsening each time his heart throbbed in his chest. Those pounds were getting faster and heavier, too, and they made his fingertips shake. Lance probably should have been able to focus on nothing other than those aching palpitations and the burn of his eyes, and yet he couldn’t stop berating himself in his head. Because he’d lied, he’d  _ lied, _ to his own family and, worst of all, it had been when they needed the truth because Lance had  _ asked _ for their help in deciphering things. And he’d lied about those things he needed answers for. The queen, everyone in the country, and his  _ husband _ were counting on answers his family could provide and the answers they were going to get would be based upon lies. Because Lance had been selfish.

That burn at the top of his throat, the lump in his chest that his family had left behind, that bitter burn of his cheeks. They were guilt.

Lance and Keith were alone with the guilt in the end. The knight let a faintly disgruntled expression fall into place across his features. Lance figured his husband had an argument brewing in his armored chest, clanging on the metal there, because Lance had withheld so many of his recent tragedies from his unendingly worried parents and his endearingly frustrated siblings. He said nothing and merely nibbled on his dried lips, a sting of tears under his drooping eyelids, as Keith continued to look at him with a numb irritation. There was a fight in the knight’s eyes. Lance tried not to let his fear of it rattle his breathing or knock the tears free from where he was barely holding them in his eyes. 

But the fight on his husband’s face was a fight that never came to be. 

Keith, drawn forth by some string of love Lance could feel tug at his heart, crossed the distance between the two chairs the pair stood by. He reached a hand to Lance before the rest of his body could get to him and it grappled to the hair behind his ear first. The hair Lance was certain felt far less soft than usual and the hair he wouldn’t be surprised to find tangled with dust from their day’s travels. And yet, as Keith touched the spot, he drew his fingers through it a few times, eyes almost slipping shut from some amount of pleasure he derived from the action. His eyes were slipping closer to shut, same as Lance’s had done when he’d gotten back home and soaked in the nostalgia of it. He could then recognize the desperation with which Keith pursued the spot behind his ear as the desperation he’d felt in his heart to listen to the town earlier in the evening. He could see how Keith looked like melted butter and folded like a wet sponge because he’d grounded himself in the half-familiar feel of Lance’s hair. The argument was gone in his eyes when they reopened fully. Instead, his dark eyes simply looked as though they were approaching miserable and pitying.

The rest of Keith followed his outward reach from before, until his and Lance’s chests were less than a breath’s travel apart. He slipped the fingers behind Lance’s ear to behind his head. Then Lance was tugged forward so his chin could prop above Keith’s shoulder and so he could ground himself in his husband’s heartbeat and scent and everything about him. Keith was undoubtedly doing the same with everything about him, but he still found the time to break through the intoxication it always caused so he could speak. “It’s alright,” he said. And it was like Lance hadn’t even realized he was on the brink of a meltdown until that moment. Not in a bad way, like Keith had been the one to make him feel hurt and distraught and  _ lost, _ but rather that Keith had been the one to make him realize the tears behind his eyes were still unshed and acting as a fertilizer to more negative emotions. And, with that realization Keith sprouted, they were being shed in abundance, sent to drip against the knight’s neck. “You’re alright.” Lance bit back a wail. “I’ve got you.”

He sputtered. “I don’t want to lie to them,” he coughed out, quiet enough no one but Keith could hear, but loud enough in his own head that his ears started to ring. “But I can’t—” he cut himself off to breathe. It was strained, like the air was drawn in through a filter with holes just a little bit too small. “I can’t tell them the truth or they’ll worry and I won’t have anything to point to and say, ‘look! The solution is here!’ Because we don’t know what’s going on. What could I even tell them?” Choking on another silenced and smothered cry, Lance felt Keith tangle his hand tighter against the hair above his nape. The knight had slipped a hand to the small of his back at a time he couldn’t pinpoint, too, and that one wrinkled his undershirt as he was pulled closer to Keith and his tranquilizing heartbeat. “We don’t know anything, Keith,” Lance wheezed.

Keith was hushing next to his ear. “That’s not true,” he consoled and Lance was fleetingly struck with the realization that Keith had become so much better at doing that over the years. The Keith who went on a date with him when they were children wouldn’t have been able to do this. “That’s not true, Lance. I know a few things.” Lance thought it was a poorly timed joke, that it was his interpretation of what Lance said as something literal, or that he was arguing because no one knew  _ nothing, _ but it hadn’t been. Keith’s voice was entirely sincere when he continued. “I know you’re— _ we’re _ going to be alright, for starters.” Lance snuffled against his neck. “I know your family is going to understand when we sort this all out and you finally do tell them the truth.”

“But Veronica earlier, she was so irritated when I didn’t tell her about the attack,” Lance drifted off because he’d begun to hate the weak and shrill sound of his voice and he’d become sick of hearing it. He felt Keith shake his head and he saw it in the swing of his ponytail behind his head. Slow, like a pendulum. Repetitive in a soothing way.

“She’ll understand, Lance. I know she will.” Lance nodded back, because he needed to for his peace of mind, and he tucked the bridge of his nose where his cheek had been along Keith’s neck before, so he could attempt to dry his tears on his husband’s skin. “And I know a few other things, too. I know I’m going to trust your judgement and back you up whenever you do decide to tell them, okay? I’m going to back you up.” It was alarming how strikingly calm Keith seemed. He’d placed his own concerns on the back burner because Lance had been about to cry and, upon realizing that, Lance wanted to sob harder because he felt like Keith had just as much a right to be upset. He felt awful for making Keith act as the adult as he blubbered like a fool. Hiccuping, Lance murmured a broken apology Keith likely didn’t understand the context of. “Hey, hey,” he soothed and he didn’t even need to say that the apology was unnecessary because Lance could hear it in those two words alone. “There’s one more thing I know, okay?” His hands loosened around Lance’s undershirt and in his hair so the brunet could be nudged away—tugged away would be more appropriate with how he clung like a burr to Keith’s form—and Lance didn’t bother to unwrap his arms from Keith to wipe at the snot seeping from his nose. “I know that I love you.” Keith blindly fumbled around on the table, refusing to turn from Lance, and he patted in search of his napkin from lunch. When he found it, he slipped it under Lance’s nose and then over his wet cheeks. “You know that, too. I know you do.”

And Lance hacked a wobbly laugh. “You lied.” Keith looked like his heart had stopped and his skin shone worlds paler, as white as the moon. An argument was in his eyes again, in the most fretful, but kindest of ways. He stuffed Lance’s name past his lips and he was about to follow it with assurances that he did indeed love Lance and that he was terribly far from lying about it, but he was so awestruck with even the prospect of Lance believing Keith didn’t love him that he fumbled with his words for a moment. Lance could read the declaration of love in the preparatory breath Keith sucked in and he cut it off. “You said one more thing you knew,” he clarified, “but you ‘know’ I know? That’s two more things you know.” 

The knight huffed to himself, yet a smile crept its way onto his face. “Yeah. Yeah, that is two more things.” Lance chuckled as Keith obsessed over every drying tear on his face again. Eventually, he abandoned the napkin he’d been using and he began to rub his thumbs over Lance’s skin instead, until he ultimately abandoned that, too, in favor of gripping the back of Lance’s head. He tugged their foreheads together, then back apart as he let his lips ghost over Lance’s. It was off center and askew and the way it made the brunet’s nose squish was simultaneously inspiration for laughter and cringeworthy, as was how it wet the divot above his lips more than his tears had. And still it was tender and soothing and familiar; it was everything he needed to solidify all of Keith’s reassurances. 

“Thanks for that,” he whispered, his swell of anxiety still itching under his skin. But he’d held eye contact the whole time, despite how he wanted to throw his head under twenty-two layers of dirt, or stuff it up in the clouds to avoid the gentle look Keith wore. The loving gaze he was beating into Lance’s head with a hammer or the blunt side of an axe. At least, it felt like he was beating it with how it made Lance ache. They were close enough that Lance could see himself in the glittering, driven stare that had him so weak. But, by the gods, he saw the stars, too. He would forever swear to his parents, his siblings, his future children, his undeserving neighbors, to anyone who would listen, that the stars were brighter in Keith’s eyes than they could ever be in the sky, no matter how few clouds there were. He couldn’t see the sky in Keith’s eyes at all—the knight was looking down at him—but he could see the stars behind Keith and it was like they seeped into his inky hair then dripped into his eyes. They weren’t there, but they should have been; they would have looked perfect in the violets of Keith’s smitten, soft gaze. 

Lance caught so much on the nonexistent stars, he followed them so avidly, he almost missed the way Keith shook his head at his apology. “Don’t mention it. Not gonna lie, I was right there with you. Do you think the queen would let me go on vacation after this is over? If I ask, after all this, she’d be a monster to say no, to be honest,” he muttered through laughs. And the sound of his laughter was full and genuine, joyous and true, and it filled Lance’s heart with alcohol. The knight leaned to kiss Lance’s lips sloppily again, a smile crinkling the stars at the corners of his eyes, and the view swished the alcohol inside Lance’s heart. “Kidding,” he said. He narrowed his eyes at a patch of grass a few feet of way afterwards, however, and added, “only partially, though.” Lance felt his husband jostle the hair on his head around for a moment, then Keith turned to the table and Lance was, regretfully, released. Scooping his dishes from lunch into his hands, the knight piled them atop Lance’s, then tugged them all to his chest. “I’ll run these to the kitchen and while I do, I can look forward to sleeping in an actual bed tonight, right? Tell me there’s a spare bedroom here  _ somewhere, _ Lance.” The brunet was still a little slow on the uptake of humor since he was still winding down from his fit, but he caught on and a smile rounded his cheeks.

“Yeah, my old room is still empty, I’m sure. And my bed is always open to you,” he answered with a tender brush of his thumb under Keith’s starry eyes. The sentence was said in purity and love, but then, in the spirit of setting his mood back to normal, he winked and swung closer to Keith so the edges of their dishes dug into both of their stomachs and so his lips landed on his husband’s neck. “If you know what I mean,” he breathed. Keith’s lips buzzed with a laugh he tried, and failed, to stifle. How Lance loved ruining otherwise heartfelt moments. At this point, more to hear his husband laugh than anything else, but he’d use the excuse of being a trickster all the way to his grave; he’d put it on his grave, too, probably. 

Keith tore away after he laughed, ponytail swishing as he turned; the hair was glittering with moonlight and starlight and mirth. “Yeah, you’re better now. I’m glad.” He tossed a wave over his shoulder as he jogged to the kitchen to deposit the dishes into the sink for someone—probably Lance, if Veronica got input in the choosing—to scrub in the morning. Lance dragged his wrist under his nose and smiled after his husband. He smiled at the footprints he left behind, but not for long, as Keith was eager to return and he trudged dirt over his old footprints in his sprint back to Lance. He was on him in an instant; a hand was moved without an ounce of hesitation to clasp with Lance’s, two eyes clung to his like a magnet, and words were in his eardrums, tapping against them, before he could truly appreciate the repeated shot of alcohol in his heart at the closeness. “Lead the way.” 

Lance tugged Keith’s hand in the direction he knew his room would be in. His family was of a decent size, so together, they inhabited several small houses throughout the village. The house he’d grown up in with his parents and siblings, before most of the latter category had moved out, was close to the plaza of the town, where the dirt alleys between houses and stores and bars turned to cobblestone. It was a decent distance from where they’d eaten lunch, by the house Nadia, Silvio, and their parents lived in. So, they began to move and, as they passed his sister’s house to get to where Lance’s room was, the brunet tapped on the window he knew would lead to his nephew’s room. The boy poked his head up over the bottom frame of it and waved, before scurrying into bed as his mother walked in. Lance waved at her, too, and she smiled knowingly at Silvio and the sheets that covered his body only halfway. He’d been sloppy in his haste to return to feigning sleep before she could see him awake. 

It wasn’t too vast a distance to the house he knew his parents and, hopefully, Veronica had already retired to, since the town wasn’t even a third of the size of Castle Town. But it was a lot of weaving between buildings and it went slowly because Keith still had his armor on and they wanted to refrain from waking the whole village up with rushed clanking. There wasn’t much talking, either, but the silence between the couple was the kind of silence with squeezes of hands to communicate and with playful hip bumps to occupy the time. It was a wordlessness that was familiar to Lance in a way only achievable with Keith. The brunet eagerly gulped and swooned at the sweet alcohol taste of the familiarity.

After he’d sufficiently sobered, Lance could tell his husband was trying to soak in everything around him. His head was constantly swivelling and he swept all the buildings they passed with a top-to-bottom onceover that someone who was accustomed to the town wouldn’t have used. Silent was something he may have been, but inattentive wasn’t, and Lance’s heart swished even more warm alcohol into his veins in knowing that Keith was interested in his home. He squeezed Keith’s hand mindlessly when the drunken buzz hit his stomach. Still, nothing was said. 

Even less was said when they made it to the house. There were no lit candles or illuminating spells on the wall and Lance could hear both of his parents snoring loudly down the hall. Veronica’s door was shut, so Lance assumed she was in and sleeping, too. Shucking his shoes off by the door and silently urging Keith forward, Lance felt like a delinquent sneaking into his house past curfew for the first time in his life. He tugged his husband to his bedroom with stumbling socks that slipped on the polished floorboards and caught on the stairs. The idea of a bed under his spine after having slept with his ass to rocks the night before was revolutionary and it left an addictive taste in his mouth. 

Shoving Keith up all the steps and carrying more of his weight than was fair, Lance moved with as light of feet as he could. He slipped and almost fell down the stairs when he reached the top, but Keith caught the front of his armor and pulled him up until the two were giggling, more than a little tipsy on excitement at the prospect of a good night’s rest. Lance nudged Keith the rest of the way to his bedroom door, knowing the way without being able to see over his husband’s broadened-by-armor shoulders. He caught a glimpse of a blue rug poking out from beneath a polished wood door and he tugged the man to a stop, slipped between him and the door with eyes locked together, and twisted the knob behind him without looking. Winking as a welcome, he swung the door open and, with it, flung his arm up to point with his whole hand. 

All in all, the room was a little underwhelming. Though everything was shaded grey by a mix of night’s darkness and moonlight’s brightness, it was easy to tell the space was nothing as large and extravagant as Lance’s bold personality. He had yellowing sketches from his niece and nephew on one wall, strung along a piece of twine that was fraying at the ends. His dresser was rounded at the corners and white, the shape of it was neither intricate nor plain, and it was tucked neatly into a corner. All the same could be said of the desk stuffed in an opposite corner, with a splash of color only where its legs met the blue of the rug Lance had spotted from under his door. His bed was pushed to a pastel colored wall and its bedsheets smelled freshly cleaned—he made certain to remember to thank his mom for likely having sent someone to make sure of as much when he and Keith arrived. Everything was deeply  _ home _ for Lance, just how he could remember everything being, and he waited for Keith to step the rest of the way in from the doorway, before he let the door he was holding open slip from his fingers as he leapt atop the lavender smelling sheets. 

“Not exactly how I thought your old room would look,” Keith admitted as he fiddled with a framed letter on the dresser he’d crossed the room to observe. He brushed a thumb over the glass of it and Lance could tell he was reading it. Lance himself hadn’t placed the letter there because it was, undoubtedly, one he wrote to his mother while away that  _ she’d _ placed in his room. It sat upon his dresser likely so she had something to come back to in case a wave of missing Lance crashed against her heart. Judging by Keith’s fond smile and the way the tips of his ears went a soft red, though, the knight was probably spelled out in kind words on the paper somewhere. “In fact, the whole house isn’t how I thought it’d be.” Lance hummed confusedly, a tired squeak of a noise, because he’d thought his house seemed fairly normal. “Too small,” Keith answered the noise. Then he crossed the room to brace a palm on the edge of the bed in a way that allowed him to bend closer to Lance, lips pinched between his teeth to hold back laughter. “For a prince.”

“Oh, for the love of—Hurry up and go to sleep, asshole!” Lance slipped the pillow from under his head and tossed it at his husband’s face. It rebounded and fell across his own stomach. Keith picked it back up and nudged Lance’s waist with it a few times, a wordless request for him to move closer to the side by a foot or two, so Keith would have enough room to join him. Obliging easily, Lance rolled from his back to his stomach, and buried his nose in the sheets. As he’d made a mental note of earlier, they smelled like lavender, like home, and like one of his favorite shampoos, a bottle of which undoubtedly sat on the edge of the shower in the bathroom at the end of the hall. He thought of it with a grin. “I can’t  _ wait _ to take a shower. My hair desperately needs washing.” Keith’s knee was in bed now and he let himself fall forward, nose close enough to Lance to smell. His armor rattled as he collapsed and Lance nearly bounced up in response to the weight of all of it crashing down. 

The knight buried his nose in Lance’s nape while his cheek was pressed to the pillow he’d brought with him from standing. As he breathed against the spot, casual and comforting, he began to unclasp the straps holding various parts of his armor in place. He didn’t even need to unbury his nose from Lance to do it. Muffled by both the pillow Lance had thrown at him and by the closeness to Lance’s hair, Keith spoke. “Smells fine to me,” he mumbled. Lance bristled and rolled so it was no longer his nape Keith was nestled against. Their foreheads were touching again, Keith’s fingers slowed over the sheath he was undoing from his waist, and Lance very nearly lost the taunt behind his exaggerated, playful scoffing noise from before.

“I’m sorry, but it’s hardly acceptable for a  _ prince, _ Keith.” The knight laughed, rocking himself into sitting in a way that looked as though the movement could have been attributed to the strength of the noise he’d made. As he did, he tugged his chest plate off and placed it in his lap. Lance sat up with him and began assisting with what he knew how to undo—straps enough like the belts he would wear with some of his outfits that he could piece together how to unclasp them—and he made the slow process of freeing his husband just a little faster. 

When it was all done, when the dented metal was in a haphazard clutter on the floor in such a way that made certain Keith would inevitably trip over it the next morning, Lance removed his leather cover on his chest. At the completion of that, he found he was prodding at his husband’s undershirt. At the streaks of mud in the junction of his arm and chest, where dirt had slipped into the armor and soaked in Keith’s sweat earlier in the day. At the folds in cloth over his shoulders, the places his skin was undoubtedly pinched and bruised from the straps and metal of the armor he’d worn for hours upon hours. At the small tear where the pinching had been too sharp and had pierced the fabric. At the exposed bit of purple flesh underneath, a cute shade of lavender flecked with nasty red in a way that would have been perhaps artistic, had it not been for the soft canvas it was on. 

With a craned neck, Lance kissed the spot marred in such an unsightly manner. Keith lifted a hand to hold the back of his head at the contact, holding him there—solely to be close—a second longer. “You mean the world to me,” he breathed against the skin Keith kept him against. His husband released a fluttery sound, a sigh perhaps, airy and expressing the softness in Keith’s heart at the confession. Somewhat crinkled, like his heart and voice wavered under the affection the words elicited. “If there was ever anyone I’d want to have my back in all this, it’s you, Keith.” Lance tugged his nose from Keith’s shoulder so he could rest his cheek on the spot instead. So he could look at Keith. He sighed, leaving his head where it was, but lifting his hand out to fuss over Keith’s hair. Stars were still woven and interlaced with the locks, glittering from where they came in through the window, so he dipped his fingers into them, like they were pools of milk that would soak his skin. Fiddling a bit, he added, “thank you.”

Keith hummed, nudging Lance’s head off of him with a roll of his shoulder, so he could hold the whole of it in the palm still at the back of Lance’s scalp. He tried to pull his hand away, but Lance kept his neck relaxed so his head would follow. Apparently, that had been Keith’s hope and intention all along, and the knight cradled his scalp until he passed it onto the pillow at the top of Lance’s bed. He braced an arm on either side of Lance’s head, before he brought his lips down to kiss the dip at the top of Lance’s nose. “I’d do anything for you,” he murmured, and the words sent heat directly to Lance’s chest. Hot and billowing steam against the lovesick booze in his heart from earlier, until he swore he could smell the alcohol simmering off. Yet that couldn’t be right, because Lance was evidently so utterly and immeasurably drunk. “You know that.” His lips were still trailing butterfly wing strokes against Lance’s nose. The warmth of his breath fanned across the brunet’s skin like a tide washing in on a warm beach, circled Lance’s mind, and fogged all of his thoughts over, so all that was left was the taste of alcohol in his chest and the comforting sense of Keith’s closeness. Keith swung a leg over his torso so he could straddle his stomach and center his lips over Lance’s. He trailed a hand back to Lance’s head to cup his cheek and to draw on the flesh with his thumb. Gentle and warm and easy, the lap of a brook at a shore, he spoke into Lance’s parted lips. “You’re my prince,” he said with an earnesty that made Lance forget the pet name had ever possessed a negative connotation, that it had ever been a tease. Staring into Keith’s eyes, watching the dip of his eyelashes as he blinked slowly and trustingly, and tasting the flavorlessness of his breath on Lance’s lips, it was easy to forget everything. 

Sighing, Lance shut his eyes. Yes. Yes, he could bask in this moment for eternity. Keith’s dry hand on his face—a face which was as sunbaked from desert travelling as Keith’s hand felt—reminded Lance of the faint sunburn on the heights of Keith’s cheeks and the underside of his jaw, where the silver of his armor had reflected the heat. His nose touched to Lance’s, their lips brushed at each sigh, their heat shared and mingled. Lance wound his arms about Keith’s neck to bring him down. Instantly, the knight turned soft and got to work. 

Sweet and perhaps a little sloppy was the kiss. Its taste was equal parts an illusion from the warmth of the moment and something physically prodding the taste buds on Lance’s tongue. Keith tasted like himself. So perfectly, genuinely, and wonderfully like himself. Keith had been a taste in his life for years. Lance had grown to need his kisses like water, to need his closeness like oxygen. Neither of those tasted like anything to Lance, so perhaps it should have been odd how vividly Keith could paint a picture in all of Lance’s senses with his taste and his scent and, oh, the tenderness of his fingers as he swept lines under the swell of Lance’s cheekbones. 

The movement of his lips was nudging and it came in sweet waves; pressure on and off. If there was ever a word to describe the repetitive motions it, one, would never come to Lance while he was in the moment of the kiss and, two, it would most certainly be  _ lingering.  _ Because even as Keith pulled a pinky nail’s width apart, his taste lingered. His indescribably delicious taste. The soft press of the flesh of his lips, and its gentle give when Lance pushed back, both seemed to have a taste; a feeling so vivid and delicious Lance couldn’t help but to believe there truly was a taste in the mere feeling. And he could still feel that malleability at the end of his tongue, even as he was forbidden contact with the heat and pleasure of Keith’s lips. The sensation lingered. As did Lance’s need for more. Because Keith’s heat lingered, too, as though it had climbed from where their bodies met and into Lance’s desperate lips. Keith’s scent was on those lips, too. It had mingled with the skin of his lips so the softness of Lance’s mouth was as much a lingering texture of Keith as it was his own skin’s normal feel. Whining quietly, Lance grappled the back of Keith’s neck with the intent of swallowing more of his kisses. He wrestled with his hair, tearing it out of its hair tie, for purchase on Keith’s nape because he was confident he could get Keith back to his lips if he only had the leverage to do so, but it was futile. Keith’s stubbornness lingered the same as the rest of him did. 

Perhaps stubbornness wasn’t it, though. Perhaps he stayed slightly away with intentions to send Lance’s pulse to his ears and to his throat because Keith was looking at him in that certain way only he did. Like Lance had a bit of valuable silver in his irises and Keith was trying to scoop it out of the pools of blue with his stare alone. Like there was something on his face which wasn’t normally there, but which looked absolutely stunning and captivating where it had placed itself. A word written on the bridge of his nose, splattered there like a stripe of freckles over the middle of his face, maybe. A word that curled and spun in beautiful cursive and spelled something equally elegant because, despite the lure of Lance’s pleading lips, Keith was able to resist for the sole purpose of reading that word. Over and over he read it. His gaze traced back and forth between Lance’s eyes, then down the curve of his nose, then back up to the nonexistent word over the skin between his brows. Lance wondered if that “word” wasn’t a word at all, but really a collection of three, the culmination of his obvious affection on his face.  _ I love you. _

The brunet flustered at Keith’s intense and unabashed observation—the completely fond calculation in Keith’s eyes as he basked in Lance’s shiny, wobbling lips and his dilated, scattering, begging pupils and his flushed cheeks—and he mewled again, straining to drag Keith back down. It was unavailing. He was too far gone. He was too drunk now. Too hooked on how addictive Keith’s appreciative, pensive gaze remained to him, even after seeing it this long. Too smitten with the brush of Keith’s fingers over his cheekbones, the warmth of the hand that wasn’t burrowing in the sheets by Lance’s head. (Though that other hand was delectable, too, because Lance could feel it crinkle the bedding every now and then, as Keith clenched a fist, and he jolted excitedly every time.) Too high off the way Keith’s hand felt as though it was burning his cheek with an affectionate, tipsy, dizzying heat and burning his lips with his hazy breath. 

Lance pushed faintly at Keith’s neck again, a plea on the tip of his tongue and prodding at the inside of his lips—the lips Keith was certainly not pressing against the other side of. His husband smiled, though, and the request died and buried itself down Lance’s throat. The brunet smiled back, as lovesick as Keith had been before, and his mind switched gears in an instant. Its desire shifted from longing for the press of lips on his own to the desire to admire the eager, cheery gleam of Keith’s teeth. His hands had long since loosened along their perch on Keith’s nape and they no longer pled for a kiss because tugging Keith closer meant he wouldn’t have visibility of any of his grinning, squinting features. He longed to prod the apples of his cheeks and the creases between his furrowed brows and the start of a contented tear in one of his eyes. Having ceased his push on Keith’s neck, he kept his hands there, but curled his own head up instead. It strained his shoulders and it made Keith’s stroking of his cheek waver, but his lips met the whites of Keith’s teeth as he’d intended. 

It was a tender, childish kiss. To assuredly swing up and kiss a toothy grin was always to be shamelessly childish. But to elicit such a giggle as Lance did was also to be sweet. And as Lance put his puckered lips against Keith’s laugh-stifling teeth, the hand across his cheek slipped under his neck to support his partially upright position. As he tried to let his lips fall away and his head back, Keith followed—because ultimately it seemed he’d lost his battle with his useless, stubborn sentiments—and he tugged at Lance’s lip with the teeth the mage had kissed. He was back to sucking at Lance’s lips before the brunet had the chance to truly relish it. They were both against the pillows again in equal haste. Lance was pulling at Keith’s bottom lip with his teeth as the knight’s tongue struggled to push past his unattainable, nibbling mouth to no avail. His fingertips stuttered over Lance’s cheekbone and Lance recognized the short circuit in his husband’s brain, so he took the opportunity to tug at Keith’s hair. There came a stutter in the man’s breath this time and the mage could feel it as Keith shuddered and pulled back a few inches to huff. Lance grinned wolfishly, snickering to himself. 

When Keith pulled back a touch, it truly was nothing more than a touch; it was the distance a hockey puck would have gone on grass with a flick of a finger. Not a centimeter more. And yes, he rose an eyelash’s length away, but it was only barely as much. Enough to readjust his aim to kiss the corner of the brunet’s lips and not any farther. He stayed a moment there, hardly long enough for Lance to finish a cohesive word in his head before he swung back to Lance’s mouth. A kiss there, short and soft and curled into a faint smile. Then he moved to place one past the corner of Lance’s lips he had pecked before. Removing his hand from where it nestled against Lance’s reddening cheek, he continued the pattern. Back to the center of the mouth, a little farther along the brunet’s cheek, back to the mouth again, and then farther once more; he kept going, kept placing sloppy kisses and making Lance’s cheeks bunch in smiles, until he reached the edge of his jaw.

There, he stayed a moment. There, his nose pressed into Lance’s skin a moment, a branding iron of affection that made the brunet’s skin sear with an anticipatory heat. There, Keith parted his lips and puffed hot air against the already scorched skin until Lance’s blood boiled in the most delectable way. There, Keith pressed his open lips to the sensitive bit of muscle under Lance’s jaw, and kneaded the spot with kisses. There, he cast a gaze up at Lance to gauge a reaction he really didn’t need because he had been married to the brunet for years and he absolutely knew each and every spot along Lance’s neck. There, he charted the spot with a tentative tongue anyway, until Lance hummed appreciatively, unhurriedly, and eased his eyes shut. 

His hands were braced on either side of Lance’s head and the brunet could feel heat swarming his ears from their closeness. All of Lance felt so warm. Not just outside, along the skin Keith was kissing and touching, but on the inner linings of his stomach, which were buzzing and bubbling hotly like a soda left in the sun too long. He tightened a fist in the locks of hair closest to Keith’s scalp, losing himself to the reassurance of Keith being so close. Every kiss he scattered on Lance’s flushed neck—because, yes, his nape was caked in blush, too, at this point—was a reminder of Keith being  _ there _ and being  _ with him  _ as much as it was a reminder of romantic closeness. And, gods, if it wasn’t a reminder of how much of a natural he’d always been at this, too. 

The mage’s shoulders relaxed and as he dragged his nails down to the base of Keith’s neck from his hair (leaving streaks of softened, pink skin, like the ripples a bird leaves behind as it takes off from a lake), it was as though Lance had melted and turned to water under Keith’s lips. And when Keith detached himself from Lance’s kissed skin (which was kneaded into pink oblivion same as the stripes on Keith’s neck from Lance’s nails) to huff again, the water sloshed and splashed as a shudder crashed a tidal wave down Lance’s spine. And then he pushed eagerly to Lance’s neck again, to which Lance gave him eager, easy access with a head slanted to the side. The water Lance had changed into was extremely vulnerable to the jolt of electricity Keith pressed to him when he licked along the hem of his turtleneck undershirt. Lance swore he’d been fried in the shock, shaken into a senseless mess by the simple action, and kept alive merely by Keith’s mouth caressing life into him. He tightened his hands into fists over Keith’s loosening shoulders and he began to sink deeper into his pillow. 

He thought the whole thing a pleasant daydream. The moonlight coming in through the window must have been wrong, the stars he’d seen in Keith’s hair must have been a feverish hallucination, and the lack of warm colors he’d possessed on the insides his closed eyelids must have been incorrect because, surely, this was a daydream and the sun was right against his eyelids. Either that, or he was in heaven. 

Lance firmly believed it had to be either heaven or fake. 

Until the daydream crashed.

Until Keith lifted one of his hands from its burrow by Lance’s head, and a finger of that hand looped under the hem of the brunet’s collar. A surge of heat ran from the tip of Keith’s finger, straight into Lance’s heart, sending the organ into overdrive because the heat was no longer the pleasant kind. It was spilled chicken broth or coffee, something unbelievably painful, and Lance gasped. His throat constricted, his nose burned, and his mouth went dry. Scrambling back from the touch, he felt a spark along the scar on his neck, turning the whitened skin to something as hot and as painful as molten iron. It had all become, just as it had been before the illusion of safety had been fabricated on their mattress, unbearably unpleasant. He backed himself away until his spine hit the headboard with a resounding thud. Keith’s hand was in midair, pushed up by Lance’s hasty scuttle back and suspended by the puppet strings of shock, and his jaw was the part of his body abiding by the laws of gravity in the hand’s place. Lance’s hands, while not in the air like Keith’s, were suspended in their own way; they were tied protectively over the column of his neck. 

The two wore mirrored wide eyes.

Panting as his heart pounded like he’d run up three flights of stairs, Lance angled his nose at his lap. His cheeks flushed with shame. He couldn’t begin to fathom why he’d scrambled back and, even now, his fingers trembled with the fright of being peeled back to expose the scar. He didn’t understand that, either. It wasn’t as though Keith had never seen it. Yet, his body’s response had been to run or to duck and crunch his chin down on Keith’s hand to break his exploring fingers. He hardly felt better knowing that, even when panicking, he’d wisely elected the former.

“I’m,” he stopped and swallowed. The slip of the gulp down his throat pushed against the hands he’d smothered his scar with and he trembled more at the reminder. “I’m sorry,” he breathed in a way he was confident Keith could barely decipher. “I didn’t mean to.” Keith didn’t answer and Lance didn’t lift his head to see why. His ears had gone hot and the heat made it hard to hear anything other than his own breathing and rapid pulse. A roar of blood in his ears echoed like a rapidly growing fire and it burned like one, too. “I didn’t mean to.” His eyes stung and he squeezed his fingers around his throat, perhaps in an illogical attempt to force the scar from his skin. As though it were a tube of paint or a bag of icing, he squeezed, and he would have paid buckets of money to have the scar pop from his flesh like the paint or the icing. At the point in which his knuckles probably went snowy, Keith lunged forward and clasped them.

Giving a squeeze to Lance’s fingertips, he murmured, “Lance, please don’t.” He pried them back, not without resistance, and cradled them in his lap for a moment. He wove his own fingers over and under Lance’s, tangling them together at nothing more than the tips. Flipping one of Lance’s hands over, he drew lazy circles on the palm, as if he thought occupying the hands would keep them from wanting to hide the scar. It didn’t. “You don’t have to hide it from me.” Lance’s eyes burned more in knowing Keith was perfectly aware of why he’d shrivelled back. Breaths going short and rapid, he shook his head. The swing of his head was desperate, yearning for a closure of the current conversation. “Why do you?” Keith let one of his gentle hands drift from his lap and he settled it back on Lance’s cheek, thumb under Lance’s tearing eyes and two of his fingers hooked under his jaw. The brunet flinched. The flinch made Keith’s mouth twitch downward. Lance could see his bottom lip shake for a moment, as though the lack of trust in Lance’s reaction was voluntary and Keith was hurt by it.

“I,” Lance’s voice stuttered, so he began again, “I’m not hiding from you.” A lie. A bold, disgusting, dirty, obvious lie. Keith inched his body forward to follow his hand’s placement. As Keith moved forward, Lance’s hands shifted on his lap, flattening out against the knight’s stomach as a fallible attempt to hold him away. It didn’t work and soon Keith was almost as close to the headboard as Lance. The brunet gulped and hoped he’d swallowed the wad of sponge that  _ had _ to have snuck into his throat because he was suddenly so parched. “Please, I’m sorry,” he managed, muffled by the sobs he was trying to keep at bay. 

Keith got a pensive furrow between his brows. Not angrily, not while looking hurt anymore, not anything other than thoughtfully, creases and folds appeared between his eyes. His lips spoke a word or two silently, as though preparing what to say. Still struggling to reach words, Keith began to stutter. “If you’re not hiding it, then,” he reached the hand not on Lance’s cheek to the hem of his turtleneck again, “can I see?” Lance’s eyes widened before he had a moment to contemplate the question and the shaking of his head was instantaneous. Only after he’d stopped whipping his head around did he realize how incriminating the action was. How much it identified the lie he’d told to smother the accusation of him hiding. Keith sighed and brushed a fingertip along the collar without pulling it down. He tapped twice on the side of Lance’s neck, then slid to the front and tapped the spot he undoubtedly knew held the scar. The knight breathed in sharply to speak, but floundered with his words, and ultimately didn’t say anything. There was a question there, but Lance couldn’t read it.

The brunet finally let his hands fall from pressed against Keith’s stomach and they crumpled together in his own lap. “I’m sorry,” he said again. He swallowed and the sound filled the room and dwarfed the pleasant shine of moonlight and starlight with something anxious and painful. “It’s humiliating,” he said, forcing an explanation past his lips because  _ anything _ was better than hearing his own panting, nervous breathing. “I hate seeing it. Feeling it. Feeling you touch it. It makes me feel… incompetent.  _ Weak. _ Because I think of everything that happened: the bruises on my stomach,” the phantom pain of those bruises that still came back sometimes, “the fear of losing you, and knowing you were completely ready to give yourself up so I could walk outta there.” Lance’s shoulders shook and his body started to quiver. “It was the closest to hell I could ever imagine.” 

His husband cupped the side of his neck. “And the closest to hell you’ll ever experience,” he promised. It was aptly put and it should have calmed Lance more than it did, but it didn’t make Lance’s fears wane at all. Not an ounce, not an inch, not a centimeter, not a degree, not any amount by any measurement that went in the negative direction. “Lance, that scar isn’t there because of any of that. It’s there because you healed and you got back to me. Because you saved me so many times and I saved you, too. It’s the opposite of losing me.” Lance clambered to grip the back of Keith’s neck again, to grip his shoulders for stability. He felt a sob clawing its way from the depths of his gut and he wrestled and clenched his lips together to stifle it. “So, please, don’t be ashamed of it.” The knight’s hand, previously cradling the side of Lance’s neck, spun so he could slip fingers beneath the elastic of the top of the turtleneck. He looked to Lance’s eyes, not verbally asking permission again, but making no motion to pull it down until Lance gave him the go ahead. And Lance did with a slow, cautious, wary nod. Keith rolled the fabric down until he could see the silver trail of Lance’s scar, then pressed a kiss to it with a bow of his head. His hands slipped into Lance’s hair. He lifted his lips to kiss Lance at the center of his mouth again, assuring and sweet as he murmured, “I love you.”

And there it was. There everything was. Laid bare was his scar and his insecurities and laid bare was Keith’s equally vulnerable response. Somehow, though it was something he’d tried to tell himself countless times over to no avail, hearing Keith say it made it click in Lance’s brain. He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t incompetent. He was  _ safe. _ The scar was more than a symbol of pain, it was an extension of their wedding ring, a continuation of their promises to keep each other safe. Pushing off his headboard, Lance grappled the small of Keith’s back and tugged forward until he could stuff his nose between his husband’s collarbones. “I love you, too,” he warbled. He could barely catch the scent of Keith through the tears and salt on his face, but it was faintly there and he inhaled it with a strangled breath. “Thank you.” Keith nodded above his head and Lance could feel it when his crown met Keith’s chin. 

When he pulled back, which was a few minutes after at best, Lance caught a sight of unspoken words on Keith’s lips. Eyes squinted into a question and brows drawn up concernedly in one, too. “Lance, does my reputation have anything to do with why you don’t wanna,” and he trailed off. Lance didn’t understand the direction of the question and he rolled his head to one side, eyelids slipping tiredly, to urge its completion. “No,” Keith said, dragging a thumbnail over his bottom lip nervously as his eyes clouded with thought again. “No, I, nevermind. Answered my own question.” Lance suspected the latter sentence to be untrue, but he wasn’t going to push. He was probably too emotionally exhausted to win against Keith’s push back, anyway. So, he nodded reassuringly and made certain his eye contact with Keith remained soft and steady, in hopes Keith would know he could ask his unfinished question whenever he needed. The knight shifted awkwardly. “It’s pretty late now,” he noted, the swing of the conversation causing a second of lag within Lance. He bent over Lance’s lap to tug at the corner of the bedspread tucked into the headboard. When he wedged it free, he passed it to Lance. “We both need rest.” Lance wiggled his way off of the sections of sheets he sat atop long enough to slip the bedspread loose. Once done, both he and Keith slipped their legs underneath, not bothering to tidy their shoes or armor on the floor and subjecting themselves to stumbling in the dark at dawn the next day. 

Lance settled so his arms were slipped over the covers as he laid on his back and his legs stayed warm underneath. He and Keith were splitting the pillow because Lance was too warm where he was to force himself from bed in search of a pillow in a spare closet somewhere. As Keith shuffled around next to him, fluffing his half of the pillow, Lance drummed his fingers on his thighs through the bedspread because he was reluctant to ask for more closeness. He tried to bite his tongue because Keith had finally situated himself in a suitable position and Lance didn’t want to be the one to ask him to move. “Keith?” A grunt resounded from where Keith had buried his whole face in his part of the cushion. “I, uh,” Keith’s head lifted and Lance could feel his stare and see his calculating expression in his mind, even as Lance himself stared up at nothing but the ceiling. He had dozens of stars on the ceiling, cast with some trinket spell when he was a kid, and he’d neglected to notice them until now, so he began to count them, one a second, until he pieced together what he wanted to say. It ended up being a dozen stars more than it should have been before he found his words. 

As it turned out, however, he didn’t need to say anything because he heard a shift of the sheets and he felt a palm at his shoulder a second later. A palm cupping the fabric over his shoulder and easing his attention away from superfluous numbers. His head fell to the side to look at Keith and the knight met his eyes, then rolled onto his back and tapped his chest. Lance smiled a weak, doughy smile and rocked to his knees to teeter over. When he let his cheek rest in the crook where Keith’s arm met his shoulder, he found himself diagonal along the bed and felt his toes press against the cold paint of his walls. And yet, despite the ice in the space between his toes, when he felt Keith’s arm sling tiredly over his shoulder and his pulse beat against his ear, he was the most comfortable he’d been in days. 

Listening to his husband’s steady heartbeat, he realized it resounded pleasantly like the pitter patter of a drizzle on their rooftop. It echoed against his eardrum and elicited pleasant memories; everything was easy like that. Lance had long since grown tired of the fluctuation between feeling completely at ease one moment and then on the brink of a panic attack the next, but Keith made it easier. He made it easy to remember they were moving forward, solving problems faster than they were making them, or at least working towards meeting those expectations. Keith was a reminder that everything wasn’t alright, but that it  _ would be.  _ Soon. So, naturally, his pulse—which Lance had now cupped a palm around the side of the knight’s neck to feel—was a reminder of the same. His warmth, his scent, his breathing as he got the first decent sleep he’d had in days, were all reminders. 

While feeling so reassured and full from all the knowledge of safety and security, Lance was asleep a mere minute or so after Keith. That was easy. An ache, not entirely unpleasant, was tapping at the front of his brain and dragging his eyes shut, so of course it was simple. He was safe where he was, being with Keith added a sense of normalcy, and being home was comfortable, so it was effortless. The warm heartbeat under his palm and the visibility he caught of Keith’s relaxed and shut eyelids every time he resisted the downward drag of his own were both so completely familiar, the lull of sleep was instantaneous. So, yes, it was only a minute before he felt consciousness slipping from his grasp and drowsiness dripping over his drooping eyelids like he was under a shower head leaking the sluggishness. He was out and entirely under with such rapid haste he probably should have found a crick in his neck the next morning from an odd kind of sleep-induced whiplash. But no, he didn’t wake from pain in his joints because his sleep was without interruption—meaning not a nightmare to speak of—and he stayed unconscious until dawn. 

He squinted his eyes at the window when gold trickled in from the sunrise, drifting over Lance’s thin eyelids. It had cast splotches of morning colors, peaceful and simple and warm, over his vision and he found it warming his stomach to a snug simmer. With a toasty gut and equally homely snores from his husband on the crown of his head, it was almost futile to try to cling to his consciousness. Pawing the side of Keith’s neck in an almost failed attempt at distracting himself into remaining awake, his brain stirred enough to let him stare at his surroundings and the new light the morning painted them in. 

He’d woken up in exactly the same snug position as he’d been in the night before, for starters, and Keith still snored exactly as he had the night before, too. Keith’s arm was still over his shoulder and Lance’s cheek was against the crease between his husband’s arm and chest. Though, perhaps Keith had shifted a miniscule amount in his sleep because the arm over Lance’s shoulder had a hand that was pinching some of his undershirt in a way that could almost be described as desperate, which it hadn’t been doing the night before. The placement of Lance’s cheek was more on Keith’s collarbone than it was arm, unlike how it had been a few hours prior, too, so he could now see how the sun’s glow made the paleness of Keith’s neck seem closer to gold. The new position was the epitome of comfortable and it almost sent Lance back under the spell of drowsiness. He nearly missed the lure of the glowing sunrise on his cheeks in favor of falling back into a dreamless sleep. Alas, however, Keith was twice as bewitching as any sweet nothings which might silently whisper of sleep.

In this lighting, with the colors of the morning, he noted Keith’s face looked much different. Warmer, Lance would say. In the night his husband had been all cool and neutral colors. His eyes had been made of soft greys, like lakes in the dark, shimmering starlight on their surfaces, but mingling with the darkness of their depths to make something murky, though stunning and trustworthy. His hair had been comprised of strands of charcoal blacks, like the rounded stone one might scoop, still dripping, from the edge of that nighttime lake. Like the darkness that ebbed welcomingly around stars. His skin had been a kaleidoscope of different moonlight silvers; bright and sharp, but in a soft way, as one might imagine the combined taste of icy water and mint, if they were colors and not tastes. His eyelashes had flashed snowy whites as they gathered the night’s faint lights, as though each bat of them were a swing of a net to capture a milky butterfly. 

Yet now Keith was warm and dazzling, with rosy cheeks, peachy eyelids, and a yellow halo along his dark hair until the locks no longer seemed a neutral, black color, because they’d been invaded and tainted and set ablaze by the shimmer of the surrounding colors. Lance spent an indeterminable amount of time staring because, for once, Keith wasn’t awake before him to escape from the unabashed attention. In fact, he’d stared so long, he’d lost his chance to drift back asleep for an extra couple of minutes. He was fully awake, irreconcilably so, by the time he’d finished his morning appreciation of Keith’s light-catching lashes and sun-swallowing hair. (Gods, if his hair did swallow the sun, it certainly kept the warmth and flickering light of it in its belly because it framed his face and made his cheeks and his lips and his everything glow.) He’d spent so long with sleep lapping at his brain like the rising tide would lap at someone’s toes and ankles, almost drawn in because Keith looked like the most divine of dreams. Although he could never spend long enough in his observation of his husband. Of his parted lips, dry from snoring softly in his sleep. Of his sharp nose, casting equally sharp shadows across his cheeks as it sliced the incoming light in pieces. Of his beautiful perfections and jaw-dropping imperfections.

Truly, how could Lance ever get his fill? 

He could, however, get more than enough of the stench of sweat on his body and he’d felt more than his fair share of the need to shed his own skin as a result. Unwinding himself from the loop Keith had created over his shoulder with a muscled arm, Lance flattened his palm on the mattress and sat himself upright. Keith was a heavy sleeper, so aside from a murmur and a tightened pinch to Lance’s shirt, the motion went unnoticed and unresisted by his husband. He managed to crawl to the end of the bed without waking anyone—though the clatter of people downstairs told him there was only one person left asleep to wake anyway—and he slipped around Keith, drifted through the gap between the ends of his husband’s legs and the edge of the bed. The sheets crinkled where Lance’s knees hit and he fought to keep the ends of the bedspread tucked because, if they came undone, he was certain the subsequent invasion of the morning chill would stir his husband. 

His toes curled as they pressed to that chill on the wooden floor. As his other foot followed, the chill that ran up his spine made him want to crawl back against Keith’s warm chest. The shudder felt like a message spelled over his back, ordering him to slip under the covers again, and it took everything he had to trudge forward and resist it. He began stepping around the pile of armor—which had been in a stack that had seemingly toppled at some point during the night because now it cluttered even more of the floorspace—and he padded to the bedroom exit. A few more steps and he was at the doorway to the bathroom at the end of the hall, pressing his fingertips to the door to get in the room and to the bath. 

The bath itself didn’t end up striking a particularly deep place in Lance’s memories. In fact, he didn’t quite think of anything the whole time he was there. Maybe the nostalgic scent of the shampoos and soaps, kinds Lance couldn’t get back in Castle Town, were somewhat thought provoking, but if they were, they were the only part of that half hour that was. He was still too tired to think. But after he shimmied into a towel, after he ruffled his hair dry, after he hobbled hastily back to his bedroom before the cold air could soak into his skin like the scent of cleanliness had, his mind was busy. Because he was thumbing through all his dresser drawers with a certain torment driving his movements, looking for anything to wear. And it wasn’t really  _ anything _ he was looking for. No, in spite of all his husband’s reassurances the prior night, giving up his habit of turtlenecks was damn near entirely implausible. His parents were downstairs, his parents didn’t know, Veronica was mad enough at him as it was, and she didn’t know either; he couldn’t go downstairs with his scar bared. 

Breaths heaving, he tore another drawer out. The climate of the desert hardly allowed ample time for turtlenecks and, boy, was it reflected in his clothing selection. In fact, though he had a few jackets on hangers in his closet, he was quite certain they were the only long sleeves he hadn’t taken with him when he moved out. He clutched the towel tightly bunched around his body—it wound all the way up to his neck, just in case someone were to come in unexpectedly—and he scrambled to his closet. Fingering as many jackets as he had, he tried to find one that would serve its purpose in an inconspicuous manner as he slid the hangers from one side of the closet to the other. It was fruitless and panic clambered into his heart. About to spin to scavenge through the drawers of his dresser again, he closed his closet. His mind was reeling, figuring maybe there was a loophole in the origin story of his scar, like how maybe he could fabricate a convincing lie, one that would let him wear a normal shirt. Deciding another lie was how it had to be, his heels dug into the ground to push him back towards the dresser, but before he could begin to turn, there were arms around his waist.

They were the golden arms he’d seen earlier, baked a temporary warm shade by the sunlight the whole room was basking in. He saw the shadow of Keith’s head over his shoulder as he stared at the painted, white doors of his shut closet. It was cast in perfect, replica size by the sun that had risen to be level with, and fully behind, both him and Keith. His husband’s arms were warmly outlined and orange, but he had a shirt hanging on the end of one of his fingers and while it glowed the same tangerine color in the fuzz on the edges, it was a starkly noticeable grey. Lance hooked his own finger around a fold in it and, as he did, Keith dug his nose into his neck.

Softly, he breathed out, grogginess a constant note in the sound. His breath was hot in the most comforting of ways. It was a hot, summer breeze he could recall from his younger years, the perfect feel to pair with chirping, squawking morning birds and humming bugs from outside. It was his and Keith’s shared fireplace in the winter, the sensation completed by the glowing of Keith’s golden arms about his waist, shining the same peachy color as the tips of the flames in that fireplace. It was the opening of an oven, familiar and an allusion to something sweet inside. 

One finger, from the hand not still looped around the hem of the shirt, slipped up to peel the towel back from Lance’s neck, tucking it down against his collarbones. It traced an imperceptible and numbing line just under the scar along his Adam’s apple. Lance felt Keith nestle a kiss against his shoulder. “I know I said you don’t have to hide it,” his husband murmured, “but you don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with, either.” Lance tugged the fabric in his husband’s hold closer to his eyes, verifying that it was indeed his own shirt and Keith let his hands settle again over Lance’s stomach. He kissed his shoulder for a second time, as Lance brought the shirt to his nose and the stuffy smell of it told him Keith had snatched it from a drawer while he was rummaging through the closet. The knight took the shirt back and pulled himself away, too, in a way that made Lance teeter back as though Keith would take him those few steps back as well. His eyes were shut and he chased the warmth in Keith’s chest that had been so rudely taken away. Keith braced a hand between the brunet’s shoulder blades to keep him away, before he slipped the shirt on over Lance’s head. It ruffled the brunet’s hair, dragged it down his forehead, and tickled his skin, but Lance didn’t make any effort to bat it away. “I just want you to know I don’t see any disgrace in that scar, okay?” Keith stepped forward to hug Lance from behind again. Lance nodded so his hair brushed Keith’s cheek.

With a rub to his eyes, Keith wrestled with the drawer to grab Lance suitable pants, then tossed them over. After that, with yet another feathery touch to the sleep lingering under his eyes, Keith stumbled out the door and to the bathroom. Lance supposed the steam from his earlier bath leaking down the hall had guided Keith where he needed to go because the sounds of a new bath being drawn came a few seconds after Keith left the room. A few more minutes and Keith was back and dressed, so the two meandered down to all the rattling in the kitchen. 

There was food scattered across the kitchen table, half of it gone already, and Lance saw his mother doing dishes in the sink. Nadia had come over for the morning, it seemed, and she dragged a stool up to the counter to lend a hand. Keith hastily stumbled over to offer his own assistance. In an instant he’d gingerly taken the dishes from the hands of Lance’s mother and he was scrubbing them himself with a sponge he’d also goodnaturedly stolen. Lance smiled as his mother thanked his husband and moved to sit back at the half empty table next to Veronica. Lance’s sister was scowling at a shallow cup of coffee—really no more than a ring of brown at the bottom of an empty mug—and she wrapped one set of fingers around its handle aggressively while the other pinched the bridge of her nose. Normally, Lance might have said something, asked something about her condition, but he was familiar with the way she slid her glasses down from their perch on her forehead. He knew the malice behind the way she straightened them on her nose. 

Deciding to join Keith at the sink, Lance waddled up behind Nadia. He scooped her up to hold her closer to the dishes she wanted so desperately to help Keith clean. She giggled, something airy that made Lance want kids even more than he had the day before, and she reached eagerly for the suds in the sink. They fiddled there for a bit, working quickly through the small stack of dishes, until they were gone and Nadia reached for Keith instead. Grappling a hand on the knight’s shoulder, she scrambled further from Lance’s hold until the brunet had no choice but to pass her over. Keith accepted and let her crawl atop his shoulders until her arms were around his neck and her heels nestled in the cupped palms he’d turned backwards to carry her. 

When the trio moved to eat their share of what was left of breakfast, Nadia moved to sit flat on Keith’s shoulders and marvelled at how much closer she was to the light fixture hanging from the ceiling. The girl reached clenching and unclenching fists towards the decoration every few seconds, clapping her heels back against Keith’s ribs in a way that made the head knight tighten his jaw at the resistance it took not to complain. He looked pleased to have gained her trust, but frustrated by the struggles it dragged along. Lance stifled a laugh at his duality and reached out to grab the tongs by the centerpiece of the table—a vase of honeycomb shaped desert flowers he couldn’t name—so he could serve himself a serving or two of leftover breakfast. After he dropped the last piece of bacon he wanted onto the empty plate in front of his seat at the table, he passed the utensils to Keith. As he did, he cleared his throat. “So, Veronica,” he said, sleepiness permeating his voice and turning it into something thicker. “Any news?” His metaphorical footsteps were wary and light, a mere prod at the dormant beast of irritability under his sister’s eyes. 

The woman’s hands tightened over her mug, nails clacking against the curve of it rather than the handle, now. She gave a sort of grunt in answer, slipping her glasses back to her forehead and pinching her nose, before she reached a hand across the table to grab the cup of coffee in front of Lance. He let her—not like he was going to drink it, anyway; he’d gotten his first good rest in days, so he didn’t need caffeine—and watched as she took a mouthful of the drink down before clapping the ceramic mug back on the table. “Yeah,” she answered. And it was short. Short and snappy and Lance could smell the dark scent of unsweetened coffee grounds on the word. Lance wrinkled his nose but waved a hand as he bit into a piece of bacon to urge her to continue. “The main thing we learned is there are traces of dark magic in the blood, but it’s more likely contamination than anything else. That tells us whoever cast the spell probably uses dark magic frequently, which is typically—” Keith waved a hand, a piece of bacon between two of his fingers.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m not a talented spellcaster like all of you seem to be. What the hell is dark magic?” Lance stomped a heel over his toes at his minor vulgarity and flung a pointed gaze, for an instant, from Keith to the girl on his shoulders. Pausing, the knight cautiously added a correction. “Heck.” He took a piece of toast from a dish on the center of the table and bit it while he waited for an answer. No one leapt at the opportunity, so he proposed another question, mouth still crunching bread as he spoke. The sloppy manners earned him another bruise on his toes. “Actually, how does magic ‘contamination’ happen anyway?” His fingers rose, still clasping bacon, to form air quotes around the statement of contamination. Still, no one answered and Keith turned to pose the question to Lance.

In fact, everyone turned to Lance with varying degrees of exasperation and contempt written at the ends of their noses. Veronica looked something akin to disappointed, as though Lance had brought a downright heathen home as a husband which, had Keith not made up for his inaptitude in magic by being the head knight, would have been reasonable. But, despite his awful table manners and his hilarious ignorance (genuinely, how could anyone expect him to lead troops when he didn’t even grasp the fundamentals of how magic worked?), he more than compensated and he seemed to have pleased Lance’s mother enough to warrant her batting Veronica’s scalp at her horrendous look. 

The brunet sighed, seeing everyone pass the job of explaining onto him. “Well,” he began. “To answer your first question, dark magic is magic that requires a more exact ratio.” Keith gave him a smug grin that told him his husband knew the wording was from an old lesson and not of his own creation. “I mean it’s an eye for an eye thing. Normal magic will let you kinda substitute—you take on fatigue in exchange for casting a spell, for example—but dark magic would be, like,” Lance drifted off and dug a nail into the underside of the table as he thought. “Let’s say you’re injured and I wanna heal you,” Keith swallowed some lump in his throat with a wince, an almost invisible wrinkle in his nose, “hypothetically. Normal magic would mean I just run the risk of wearing myself out. If whatever hurt you was too strong or something, though, dark magic would let me do more, but I’d have to give the perfect exchange.” Keith was gripping his fork like it was a blade and Lance was struck with the sunlight on its tongs as glaringly as he was struck with the realization that his example was poorly chosen and timed. The tightness of Keith’s jaw was starkly obvious now, though. “In other words, to heal the injury, I’d have to take it onto myself.” 

Keith’s fork clattered as he dropped it and it hit his slowly emptying plate. He hissed and fished it out of the sliced fruit it had landed in. “Do you,” the knight murmured and wiped the utensil on his napkin, “do you know how to use it? Or is it super advanced?” Lance clenched his jaw. He knew what Keith was getting at; he knew Keith was only asking as an order for him not to use dark magic, should the opportunity arise. Lance narrowed a loaded glare upon Keith at his unspoken concerns, then turned to his bacon and prodded it with a hesitating finger. Meanwhile, he could hear Keith begrudgingly skewering a fruit on his plate and clinking the fork against the ceramics with a huff. “Alright. Well.” His words were choppy, perhaps with frustration or with concern at how Lance had brushed his question off. “What about the magic contamination part?”

Lance stood abruptly, albeit without an ounce of urgency in his swing up, and reached to snag the coffee cup from Veronica’s hands. Almost empty, like the other mug by his sister’s elbow. He swished the ring at the bottom into a puddle. “So,” he tapped the rim of the mug, “think of that part like this. When you drink something, finish the drink, and look down at the cup, there’s always a little bit left in there.” Lance gestured to the cup in his palms as he rocked onto his backside once more. He tried not to relish and commit to memory the attentive gleam in Keith’s eyes as he shifted his gaze between the ring of coffee and Lance’s face. He tried not to straighten his spine as Keith leaned his elbows onto his knees and cupped his chin with kneading fingers. He tried not to gulp at the gentle drop of his firm jaw—and the subsequent part of his lips, oh, Gods— as he concentrated and visibly strained to wrap his brain around the concept. As though, if he glared at the mug enough, he could force his brain to literally, physically fold around the mug and swallow the concept floating atop the coffee leftovers inside. “It’s a little bit like that with magic,” Lance said, drawing Keith’s intense glare up to him instead. “There is always gonna be a little bit of the last spell you cast hanging around.” Lance tapped the mug again, a nail making a sharp noise, and added more. “And, like, you know how when you drink coffee in something a bunch, the smell kinda lingers? So everything you drink in that cup from then on tastes faintly like coffee? Dark magic is like that, too.”

Keith lifted from his hunched pose, smiling. He spoke in clear jest, no hint of genuine insult in his tone. “You spent a long time thinking of that metaphor, didn’t you, Lance?” The brunet ruffled at the insinuation, even though it was ultimately correct. Pretending Keith was wrong, that Lance hadn’t broken the concept down in his head months ago in case of another call to teach the knights, he leaned forward with a wrinkled nose and flicked between his husband’s brows. Keith chuckled, buttery and quiet and contagious, and Lance swung forward to pinch at the tips of his ears, biting back a laugh of his own. 

The knight’s eyes squinted nicely; Lance took a moment to note that fact. One of his hands quit pinching the man’s ears and went to brush the crow’s feet he’d made by his shimmering, laughing eyes. Lance was positive his own jaw had slipped ever so slightly open as Keith’s had when focusing before because he was focusing, too. Trying desperately to cram that laugh into his brain permanently until it was constantly repeating and echoing, until it was all he heard forever. He could live with that. Surely, that smile, those eyes, that scrunched nose, Gods, surely  _ all _ of Keith was worth it! As he let his own laughter ebb away he thought of that, how worth it Keith would be. His fingers turned soft around Keith’s cheeks, melted entirely under the warmth of his flesh—or, more honestly, the radiance of his smile—and he felt the urge to laugh at something likely insignificant again. 

That said, the moment was shredded when Veronica tossed her fork across the table. It skidded over the wood a few inches, until it clattered against Keith’s plate with a horrendous noise. Lance laughed once more, this time sheepishly, as he heard his sister clear her throat. “Anyway, as I was saying, the traces of dark magic we found aren’t much to go off of,  _ but _ we were able to examine the traces for more info,” she said. Lance gripped the edge of the table, halfway wary and halfway insatiably excited, on the brink of tears at even the slightest insinuation that they might have figured something out. His mind kept whirring with the thought of a step forward because even a single step was better than they were now. One step closer to overcoming his nightmares, to being safe. He carved crescents into the dark wood with his nails as he awaited the continuation to Veronica’s statement. “They were cast using a method we don’t teach here in Altea.” An inkling of pride was tiptoeing its way up her cheeks, until it settled at the corners of her grin-squinted eyes. “And I was able to deduce where the spellcaster likely learned it.” 

Lance nearly shot up from his seat with excitement. Keith hunched over the table, elbows on the edge and hands in tight fists. His lips had done the thing again, the thing where they fell a centimeter apart in thought, and this time it was paired with eyes that looked the intersection of hopeful and concerned. Veronica met each of their pairs of eyes for a moment, then she flattened her palms on the wood of the table to push herself up. Her chair skidded with a quiet hissing noise and she spun on her heel. Dipping a hand into the bag on the back of her chair, one Lance hadn’t noticed until she stood up, she pulled out a roll of paper. For aesthetic purposes, Lance would have assumed the paper to be withered at the edges or yellowing, with ink scattered and scribbled across it—he knew he wasn’t the only McClain with a dramatic side—but it wasn’t. It was clean and freshly inked, likely made a few hours ago, and the rough sketches atop it were indicative of how little time was spent on it. In the end, however, it was still clearly identifiable as a map. 

Dragging her index finger across some of the squiggled lines indicating breaks in countries and towns, Veronica spoke. “Here,” she said in answer to the silent question. Her finger tapped a town maybe twenty miles over from where they were now. They could easily travel a mile in half an hour, so that meant maybe ten hours of walking, tops. Not pleasant but certainly doable. They could make it before nightfall. “The method is common here,” Veronica clarified, then she sighed. “That said, they’re not too friendly to Alteans. They sided with the Galra when Iago declared war. In fact, I’m pretty sure they even trained some of Zarkon’s greatest mages.” Lance was only partially listening, too busy internally celebrating how soon they would likely find all their answers. Gods, they’d gotten such a huge lead; they were, what felt like, infinitely closer than they had been. Things were finally looking up and he felt the sorrow flit out of his gut, the panic melt away, and all the negativity and fear transform into excited tingles, clawing at his stomach and itching his feet in a way that made him long to leap up and celebrate. Then Veronica, dully noticeable in Lance’s unfocused view, lifted her hand from the map—it rolled up with a crinkled, muffled, rustling noise—and she brought a thumb to her lower lip in thought. “Actually, I think even Zarkon’s son was trained there, so they probably won’t be too keen on helping you.”

Zarkon’s son…? That would be the crown prince, he noted. And the crown prince of the Galra empire, the  _ only _ prince, would be—

Lance stopped breathing. He couldn’t find the will to continue to try. If only he’d been listening a little less, if only he’d read the intention of mentioning Lotor on her lips and covered his ears, if only he’d stopped Veronica sooner. But he hadn’t. No, no, no. He hadn’t escaped. He’d heard that mention, subtle and unsuspected and too fast to halt, and he’d heard it loudly and clearly and boldly and  _ sickeningly.  _ He could hear his own panic in his ears, a hastened breathing that wasn’t actually there, but what he imagined himself sounding like. It made his fright worse because, shit, what if he  _ was  _ breathing like that? What if everyone could tell he’d begun to panic, begun to feel tears shoot electricity behind his eyes? The false panting in his ears, the flick of his heartbeat under his fingertips, the burn or his breath on his tongue all got faster and hotter and more unbearable.

And then he unwillingly recalled how he couldn’t show it. It wouldn’t add up to his family, his sister and his mother wouldn’t understand why mentioning Lotor got him on the brink of an anxiety attack, and they’d ask about it. He couldn’t show his panic; it wasn’t safe because he couldn’t tell them. He couldn’t, he couldn’t. Yet he also couldn’t breathe as he was, and he couldn’t make his surroundings out. Everything was blurry and too hot. Veronica, maybe four feet away, seemed worlds father as her words warbled and her face turned faded and unclear at the edges. Keith’s voice shook and stifled, too, as though he was shouting through a heavy storm and pounding rain on their rooftop and crashing thunder. Suddenly, Lance was too far gone to pull himself back from teetering over the edge. In an instant he was clinging to the cliff of levelheadedness with only a single finger. Another instant and his grip would be gone. 

His fingernails were digging further into the table, no longer out of excitement, but out of pure, unadulterated terror because he was remembering it all. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t been triggered like this before, but, somehow, having his family across the table from him made it infinitely harder to keep from getting queasy and weak kneed. There was a hand on his back, smoothly brushed between his shoulder blades, and he shot up. No matter how illogical the thought was, he’d believed that hand was Lotor’s for a moment. And he was filled with an insatiable need to get  _ away.  _ Right then, right then, right then. If he didn’t, he’d lift his shirt the next morning to find more bruises, perhaps a new scar, or worst of all, perhaps he wouldn’t wake to find anything because he wouldn’t wake at all. Maybe the hand wasn’t Lotor’s, maybe it was the goddess of death. Maybe Lotor had been in cahoots with her all along and that was why he plagued his dreams with omens of death nearly every night. Either way, he needed to get away; the hand had turned molten on his shirt less than a second after it had landed and he could see the scars it would leave bubbling on his skin in his mind.

He pushed off the table, standing and stumbling away from the touch on his back. So much had happened in his mind, it seemed so long a reaction time, but his reflexes had been momentary and everyone was startled by his hasty retreat. His chair had tottered back, a resounding crack jarring everyone in the room as it hit the wooden floor. Keith’s hand hung limply in the air, frozen inches above where Lance’s spine had been a millisecond prior—the scene was reminiscent of the prior night, Lance noted—and the brunet only realized what that meant the moment after, as he crashed onto the floor next to his chair. He still scuttled back a few feet, pain pulsating in his heart and horror in his eyes. He could feel how nervously wide and overstretched the skin of his eyelids was as he stared at the source of the palm on his back. It was only Keith, but for a moment it hadn’t been. An apology was clambering to the slacked opening of his mouth, but the hurt look in Keith’s eyes made every plausible string of words seem insignificant. 

Those dark eyes were squinted and glassy in a way that didn’t quite send tears over the knight’s lashes, but in a way that spoke volumes of being wounded. That face wasn’t quite disappointed nor was it quite hurt at Lance’s momentary distrust, but his swirling eyes shone with an ache at how Lance had fallen back into a bout of fear. They were wet not with insulted tears, but with concerned ones and they were stirring mirroring spills in the brunet’s eyes. 

Falling forward onto his palms, Lance sat on his knees. He slapped a palm onto the edge of the table again, pushed himself up, and bit his lip. His knees buckled under him, his stomach rolled, and his head swam with, and drowned, in a migraine at the motion. He slammed his eyes shut, willing the throb in his head to vanish. Lance was begging the ache growing with every mimicked throb of his heart to evaporate, too. He swore he tasted blood under his teeth as he bit further against his lower lip as a distraction to the anxiety in his gut. “I’m sorry,” he said when he finally freed his lip from wedged between rows of teeth. “You mentioned Lot—” practically tasting stomach acid at the top of his throat, his nose twitched to a wrinkle, before he amended his fib. “You mentioned a lead and I,” he fought back the cringe at the delicate, intricate lie he was weaving, “I got too excited.” He looked to Keith, who had undoubtedly pieced together exactly why he’d  _ really _ fallen to the floor because his eyes were wet with concern again. Keith sucked a breath in at the pleading look in Lance’s eyes.

Because Lance was begging. Without a word, he was requesting support of his lie. He’d run out of words before he’d even begun to speak and he had only managed even as much as he had because he was scraping the inner walls of his skull to shave off inklings of words and thoughts. The ones his brain was throbbing too much to supply. His head felt raw, overworked, and he leaned further onto the table as he wordlessly beseeched his husband to help. Anyone with the faintest knowledge of what he was panicking over would know he couldn’t do it on his own. His throat? Too burnt by lies. His tongue? Too dry with anxiety. His brain? Too heavy from the burden of powering through the panic. He was at the end of being able to function. 

Keith reached a hand out and peeled Lance’s fingers from where they were burrowing into the wood of the table. “Yeah,” he said, too soft to be convincing on its own. “This is his first mission, which makes it kinda a big deal that he found a lead.” There was sweat along the creases of Keith’s palm and Lance knew it meant nerves when that palm scooped his up. The lie was hardly persuasive and Lance could only hope his husband’s nervous ticks were less obvious to everyone else than they were to him. Luckily his mother nodded, a smile on her lips, and waved a loose hand in the air at the whole ordeal. Veronica’s nod was slower, but it did come. 

“Right,” she said, eyes squinting warily and voice as careful as footsteps over thinning, melting ice. “Well, anyway, if you leave now, you can probably make it there before nightfall. We can keep the samples here for the time being and you can take some supplies with you.” Then, to herself, she muttered, “I don’t know why the hell you came here without supplies, though…” Lance’s hand got as sweaty as Keith’s when he watched cogs turn in his sister’s head; she was picking apart all of the inconsistencies in his stories, in his coverups. He figured it was only a matter of time until every fabricated story he’d told unraveled like thread in worn, ratty socks. Until he had to admit they’d come with supplies, but that they’d lost them downstream when… 

Never thought he’d find himself thinking it (and he hated that he was), but he desperately needed to leave home. And he needed to do so before his family pieced too much together and had a chance to confront him about it. He didn’t know what they’d do, what they’d demand. He’d assumed maybe they’d insist he move back home permanently and force him to leave Keith behind in Castle Town because life as the head knight’s husband was too dangerous. And though he knew, truly knew, no one in his family was so callous as to insist upon such a thing, he couldn’t help but worry because no matter what it was they said or did, he wasn’t ready for the act of a confrontation. He needed the whole fiasco to be over. Then he could stop lying and the constant throb of guilt in his fingers, chest, and stomach would fade. But it wouldn’t be over until he left town and tracked down the source of the attacks. 

He looked over to his husband, a firm line to his lips. Swivelling to face his family members once more, he steadied his eyes, stopped the wavering in his nervously darting gaze. “Well, then,” he chirped, pulling his hand from Keith’s so he could place both sets of fingers on his hips dramatically. So he could seem stronger. So his shoulders seemed broader and tougher. So he could feign assurance when he had none. “We should probably get moving, huh.” Both Veronica and his mother looked hesitant to agree and the latter seemed disappointed to have even heard the suggestion. Scooping a slice of fruit off of Keith’s plate, Lance falsified nonchalance and popped it into his mouth. “I promise,” he said, smiling at his mother. “We’ll get the info we need and then we’ll come straight back here to visit for a few days. We’ll be back before the end of the week.” It seemed to have soothed her at least a little and she smiled back, before declaring she was off to gather supplies for them. She was out the door immediately after. 

Keith stood from his chair and Nadia, who’d been resting a cheek on Keith’s head until that moment, patted his shoulder twice in request to be placed down. Following the order, the knight kneeled for a moment so she could crawl off. Then he stood up again, watching Nadia long enough to watch her scuttle out the front door, and then to watch her dart by the other side of the window over the sink. Gaze lingering only a second after, eyes tracing over the girl’s footsteps in the dirt outside, Keith stood still. Then he bent over the table and trailed a finger over the map Veronica had smoothed over the wooden table, woven between scattered and dirtied dishes. “So, twenty miles or so west,” he murmured. Grunting, he asked, “Veronica, can we take this?” She flicked her wrist absentmindedly. He rolled up the freshly sketched map and, with a kiss to Lance’s cheekbone, he started for the staircase he and Lance had stumbled down earlier in the morning. “I’m headed to get my armor. Want me to grab yours?” Lance nodded and, after a few more seconds, he and Veronica found themselves alone in the room. 

His sister rocked back in her chair, spine flush to the crisscrossing wood of the furniture and only two of its legs still in contact with the ground. She’d crossed her arms—to match the x-shaped design of her seat, some hopefully poetic part of Lance’s brain suggested, pleading for the faint anger on her features to be fake—and she huffed. “I know something’s up with you, Lance.” The brunet hastily began to busy himself with clearing the table, scurrying to the sink with an armful of haphazardly stacked plates and silverware. He scrubbed at the stains on the collected plates without giving a response. His silence was, in all likelihood, far more suspicious than the shakily worded excuses digging claws into the end of his tongue would have been, had they been spoken, however. Veronica’s chair squeaked and, though he couldn’t see it, Lance knew his sister had stood up. Floorboards creaked as she crossed the room to pass more dishes onto the pile Lance had made by the sink. Lance pumped up the sink’s stream of water, in hopes the hissing of it against ceramics would drown out her interrogation. That, combined with his heartbeat (which was once again thundering), should have been enough to hush her next question. “Is it Keith?” 

The sudsy dish in Lance’s grip clattered against the metal of the sink, slipping from his grip in a way that couldn’t be attributed entirely to the soap coating its curves. “What?” He tried to collect his half-scrubbed plate again, but his hands were shaking too much. It clattered against the walls of the sink at least three more times before Lance gave up on it. It was lifting then crashing, then lifting and crashing again, and it was far too much like his mood had been over the past six months as he’d been battling the aftermath of his trauma. He’d stopped trying to keep his mood up, so naturally he gave up on the parallel of it in the dishes. His hand went to snatch another dish from the stack he’d made by the sink, instead, but Veronica gripped his wrist.

“Is he what’s making you off? Did he say something to you? Do something? I swear, I’ll kick his ass if you need me to—”

Lance tore his wrist from his sister’s harsh hold and yanked his eyes from her stern glare. “I promise that’s not it, Veronica. You’re being… your older sister attitude is showing.” He tried to ignore her protective and insistent watchfulness, but she didn’t move from her uncomfortably close position at his elbow. She uttered his name bitterly, a growled warning on the same breath, but not a fast enough warning because Lance tossed a dish into the slot of the drying rack with an interrupting huff. “I’m a little stressed about a lot of things, but I can promise you it’s not Keith, okay?” Then, quietly and to himself, though Veronica seemed to have plucked it out from the roar of the gushing water, he said, “I honestly think he’s the only thing not stressing me out right now.” Thus his sister swayed an inch or so away, apparently slightly complacent with his answer. 

An argument hadn’t been won, however, and she spoke again. “It’s not all stress, though. You looked scared earlier.” She breathed a little and Lance spotted her clenching a fist in his peripheral. “Terrified. I dunno what for, but you got this look in your eyes, like you’d spotted a threat that wasn’t really there.” Veronica snagged the dish from Lance’s hold briefly, holding it between the duo with her whitening fingertips. Lance watched with shoulders up around his ears nervously, meeting her gaze from the corners of his eyes and not head on because he was certain his knees would melt and give out under her fiery and demanding scowl.  “C’mon, what the fuck was that about, Lance?” The brunet relented his hold on the plate to her. 

“I dunno what to say,” he whispered, fingers grasping the forks littering the inside of the sink and twitching around their handles. And he truly didn’t know what to say. What  _ could _ he say? He had scars to speak for him, he had more frightened reactions, perhaps, but what he didn’t have were words. “It’s,” there was a second of hesitation, when he caught on his breath and his words tripped over it. When the air was snatched from his chest. He wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready to explain. “It’s complicated,” he concluded. His sister gave him an exasperated look, like she too had felt the air stolen from her lungs, but it had made her impatient and irritable, instead of antsy. Lance dodged the look by spinning so his back was to the sink and his hands clasped around the edge of the counter. The metal edge of the sink was cold, clammy, but it heated under his fingertips as he stood silently for a moment. He sighed with tightened lips and the roof of his mouth warmed the same way. Sucking a breath in, it turned cold again. “It has to do with the mission, so I shouldn’t,” he partially lied. He wasn’t forbidden to tell, but perhaps he could pretend he was. No one would push if they thought he wasn’t allowed to tell. “I promise I’ll tell all of you when the mission is over,” he murmured. 

Huffing, Veronica pushed off the counter. She gave a muttered agreeance as she gathered more dishes. When she deposited them by the sink, she paused for a moment. Shifting her weight so her spine was angled a few degrees back, she let her arms fall to her sides, stuck only a little out. Her palms were forward, her eyes turned calm behind the gleam of the sunrise on her glasses, and her eyebrows climbed a miniscule amount higher on her face in a question. Lance recognized the offer and, drying the soap along his hands with his pant legs, he wrapped his arms over her shoulders. Hers fell over the small of his back and between his shoulder blades, one hand each, as she sighed. “You’re taller, but you’re still technically my little brother. So it’s, like, my job to beat up anyone who scares you that much.” She pulled away and tucked her arms together over her chest, Lance slipping back a few inches, too. There was the beginning of a smile on her lips, face still contorted with an inkling of concern, but smoothed slightly by Lance’s promise to explain later.

Smiling and dragging his nails over the side of his neck in a sheepish itch, Lance laughed. “I think Keith has called dibs on this particular thing.” Or already handled it, if Lotor had truly died. Nonetheless, his sister chuckled a little, slapping him once on the shoulder, before a clatter of metal and a vulgar hiss echoed around the corner. Both Lance and Veronica whipped to see Keith with his foot halfway in the doorway to the kitchen and hand hanging on the wall as though he’d caught himself from falling. He had his armor on, his sword tied to his hip, and Lance’s armor balanced over his forearms. His hair was shoved sloppily into a ponytail and slung, knots and all, over his shoulder. There was a start to a blush over his cheeks, but Lance attributed it to the pink glow of the sunrise shining from the window over the sink, or maybe the lingering remnants of flushed sleepiness against his skin. His eyes were squinting through the rays of sunlight and Lance shifted himself without much thought so he could cast his shadows over Keith’s face and spare him the trouble of batting away the sun with his lashes. 

He crossed the room and passed the leather armor in his hold to Lance and, as he did, he spoke. “I do call dibs.” Lance rolled his eyes, fondness stirring in his gut like dough being folded over itself, and he popped his armor over his head. When the crown of his head and the ruffled hair there—still damp from his bath and ever so slightly warm from the sun’s baking through the window—rose through the opening at the top, his husband, with an enamored smile to his lips, ran his hands through the locks. Veronica watched, approval in a smile on her lips, both at the affection and the comment. 

She placed her hands on her hips and squared her shoulders. Then, with a cock of her head, she wordlessly relinquished the job of beating someone up to Keith. Lance heard his mother call Veronica from down the hall, so he passed his sister a soap-smeared wave and she left the room. When she did, Keith slouched a little and cupped the side of Lance’s cheek. His fingers were warm and smooth and they absentmindedly wiped a smudge of soap off his cheek. “Thank you,” Keith breathed. Lance leaned into his hand, both in a questioning tilt and because he was seeking the warmth radiating from his husband’s fingertips. “I know you don’t want to tell them,” he mumbled, sliding his hand to tug through the damp ends of Lance’s hair behind his ear and forcing Lance to hold his own head up again. Then his fingers, massaging his scalp in steady circles, drifted to the cold tips of the locks tickling the skin above the rise of his brows. “But I heard you say you would anyway. Thank you.” He leaned in a smidge, brushing the dip under Lance’s cheekbone with his lips. A second kiss tickled closer to Lance’s ear. “I’m proud of you for stepping up and admitting you weren’t alright. I’ll help any way I can when you tell them, okay?”

Something faintly warm bloomed in Lance’s gut. Soft and pleasant, no hotter than the lick of a candle, but it grew swiftly, tickling every inch of his body in just the time it took for Keith to kiss another spot on his cheek. It prodded the ends of his fingertips with delightfully tingling burns, the soles of his feet with an antsy heat, and the warmth of his chest with a steady, loving, thrumming ache. His fingertips were soon struck with an antsy heat, too, and he didn’t hesitate when he got the sudden urge to take Keith’s cheeks into his hands. He caught Keith’s eyes slowly slipping shut before he lowered his own eyelids to match. In his palms, he felt his husband melt a little, seemingly overcome with the same bubbling heat Lance had experienced a second ago—was still experiencing then, if Lance was being honest—and the weight of his head fell forward into Lance’s touch easily. Lance pulled Keith the rest of the way forward to smooth their lips together, familiar and flavorless in the best of ways. Keith woke from being putty then, his hands dipping to cup the back of Lance’s neck, then abandoning that and dropping further to grapple the edge of the counter on either side of the man. The brunet responded eagerly, quickly flicking kisses all over his husband’s face as the man tried desperately to catch one on his lips to no avail. It took him pulling a couple inches back, out of Lance’s reach, to slow Lance long enough to trap their lips together. There was a laugh inside each of their mouths at the silly tenderness of it and their lips buzzed, but there was a sound of the front door opening and they slowly slunk apart. 

“Ew,” a voice sounded, “ew!” Lance’s eyes wanted to linger shut, like stuck together with sleepy, dreamy tears that warmed his heart, invigorated his senses, like they were some sweetly scented dew. But the pair of young voices at the front door got louder the longer he and Keith remained wound in each other’s arms. “Uncle Lance, ew!” It seemed Nadia, when she’d run off earlier in the morning, had done so to gather her brother and bring him over to join the other half of the family. Lance smiled at their entry and downright smirked at their squealing. He leaned to give Keith another exaggerated and sloppy and  _ loud _ kiss on the corner of his mouth and the children shrieked at the door. “Uncle Lance! Stop it!” He tugged his hands from either side of Keith’s face to press them to Keith’s chest and he felt his husband’s heartbeat beneath his fingers—only a little faster than normal—and the rumble of his stifled laugh against his palms. Lance’s cheeks got a shameful bloom of rose at the pure tangibility of his husband’s happiness. The heat overflowed along his cheeks as he smiled because Keith had joined the teasing, peppering the side of Lance’s jaw with smacked kisses until one of the children screeched again. “Not you, too, Uncle Keith!” Then, darting through the kitchen and down the hall, they squawked, “betrayal,” as the couple by the sink boiled over with laughter. 

At that moment, through his laughter-induced squinting, Lance made out the forms of his mother and his sister dodging the children in the hallway to make it to the kitchen. “Lance, you had one job,” Veronica muttered. “I  _ specifically _ told you not to make out in front of them, for the love of—” her scolding and her breathing seemed to catch as she spotted Lance and Keith, splitting apart from one another and splitting their faces in equal measure to give her the brightest smiles they could muster. Lance’s cheeks ached, but laughter was still rocking around in his chest, sloshing his heart in the prior night’s alcohol there. Veronica finally smiled back, the mirth in their expressions apparently having rubbed off. She rolled her eyes halfheartedly, goodnaturedly, and without an ounce of malice. The woman tossed a bag at each of them. They both caught them and rolled them around in their arms in search of openings. When Lance found his, he peeled it apart and found the supplies his mother had mentioned earlier. “There’s enough food and water for about two days, so you have more than enough,” Veronica stated. “You can restock when you get there, ‘cuz Mom threw in some money, you lucky bastards. So get outta here.” 

Grinning, Lance passed his bag to Keith in favor of sprinting up to and wrapping his arms around his mother and his sister. His face wedged between their two heads and his cheeks squished as they leaned in and hugged back. “Thanks,” he muttered through forcibly puckered lips. “Love you and I’ll be back soon. Promise.” Both of them gave their respective goodbyes and returns of affection, before Lance scurried with heavy steps to his husband and took his bag back. He tried to ignore the fondness in Keith’s stare as he relished the endearingly familial display. Tried not to tangle in the smile beneath that stare, a grin small enough, peaceful enough, as to not squint his eyes with mirth, but powerful enough to make his dark eyes seem bright. Lance struggled to bat away the pinkness in his ears he felt rising, the climb of his heart up his throat. 

Keith’s face had a fondness that adamantly refused to disappear, even as he and Lance began to trek away from the house and the family. They scuttled back the way they’d come through town the night before and the knight was very visibly bewildered by everything he saw, as surprised and enamored with the town as he’d been before. During the day, light caught on everything differently and that was something even Lance, who’d grown up seeing it, could acknowledge and appreciate. The fresh morning painted everything as something new. What, during the night, had been stone buildings of greys and purples and deep, indigo blue, were now shimmering tiled structures of gold and cream and warm, flushed pinks. There was the occasional streak of sky blue on a door frame, perhaps, or maybe a speck of green in the colorful, intricate designs littered about the town, but mostly everything was summery and bright and it was impossible not to be in love with it all. So, there was nothing to be said, nothing to stir the fond smile from Keith’s face and, quite frankly, Lance hadn’t particularly wanted to remove it anyway. 

There did, however, come a time when something was said. They slipped down a street that gave them view of a building of considerable size tucked along the stone fencing around the village and Lance knew its purpose, but Keith obviously could not have known. His stare caught on it, not on its size or its proximity to the edge of town, but on its fence of metal bars and its set of three guards out front. “Is that a prison or something?” Lance let his eyes catch on the building, too, and his toes caught on the dirt in response, until the pair was stopped in a streetway to stare at the building together. 

“No,” Lance said. “But it’s kinda complicated to explain what it actually is.” Keith looked at him expectantly, a reminder that they had time, a whole day to chat as they walked. He, without verbally asking a thing, asked Lance to take the time to run through the complexities. “It has to do with magic,” he said, wrinkling his nose and making a face he hoped would deter Keith from asking for a long explanation. It didn’t. He’d had a hunger for learning anything he could about magic since Lance revealed he had an adeptness for it. Sighing, the mage resigned himself to a long winded explanation he probably wasn’t qualified to give. “Well, as my mother always put it, magic culminates from inside. It takes practice and memorization to do it without a book, but anyone can technically do magic.” Lance took a breath to gather his thoughts. He’d asked about the building himself when he was younger and he clawed the back of his brain for the explanations his mother had given in answer because he didn’t quite know how to word it as well as she had. “And, it’s like, the magic comes from  _ inside _ you; you’ve cast spells now, so you know that. And because it comes from inside your body, it loses, like, potency by the time it gets out.” The brunet thought of how his mother had helped him grasp that part. She’d compared it to drawing curtains; a body smothers magic the same way curtains lessen the influx of light. Lance figured he wouldn’t need the additional explanation since Keith was learning as an adult, unlike Lance who’d learned years prior. Whether or not he’d understood that much, however, Keith still wasn’t connecting the dots to how all of it related to the building and its suspiciously numerous guards; Lance could see the lack of comprehension in the flattened line of his lips. “Alright, so whatever the magic comes from—I didn’t pay that much attention to the big words my mom taught me, don’t give me that look, Keith! It’s inside your body, so when you die and your body rots, the source comes out. And it doesn’t have layers of body to work through anymore, so its magic is super potent and raw.” Keith stared at him and he felt self conscious of his word choice. “Or whatever.”

A few dots had been connected in Keith’s head, at least. “Okay,” he started. “I don’t think you have the firmest grasp on how all this works,” Lance punched him in the arm, on a spot past the end of where his metal armor could reach, “but what does it matter if the source is powerful? It has no body. Who could cast it?” 

“That’s what the building is for. Anyone could. Anybody who picks it up can cast a spell with it, without going through all the layers of a body so it’s super dangerous. The source has no way to maintain itself since there’s no body to replenish nutrients, I think is what my mom said. That means it’s only really useable once, but it’s one freakishly powerful spell of the user’s choosing. So, that building is where we keep those sources when they emerge, guarded, until we collect enough to make it worth sending them off to Castle Town.” Although it was a far less perilous trip to Castle Town nowadays, with the monsters plaguing the desert having been thinned out and all, they had a building that could lessen the number of trips they needed. So, there was no sense in sending the sources individually.

“Why not just keep them here permanently?” Keith had somehow caught the eye of one of the guards in front of the building in question, probably since he and Lance had been standing a few hundred yards away for so long. Lance, with a disinterested stare and stance, saw how a giddy spark flared in the guard’s eyes upon piecing together who Keith was. Looked about ready to abandon post and high tail it over for an autograph. Keith gave a nervous and unsteady, stuttering wave in answer to their excitement and the guard nearly passed out. Lance snorted to himself and jarringly brought his husband back to the conversation with a well-aimed finger up under his armor and between two of his ribs. 

“There’s a huge collection of them in the castle already and the queen’s guards are, no offense to your little fan over there, far more equipped to keep the sources safe.” Keith hummed. “But I see what you’re saying. Especially since keeping them all in one place seems excessively dangerous. One source is pretty powerful, but centuries worth of them could be downright catastrophic.” And suddenly Lance could see gears turning behind his husband’s lashes, through the fogged windows of his widening eyes. Keith wasn’t a strategist or a magical genius by any measures, but he could understand the implications of such a powerful weapon getting into the wrong hands, and he was whirring the thought of it around in his brain. Keith’s facial expressions shifted as more and more concern caught onto his initial thought, until they settled on something pensively downtrodden.

“Are there any sources that can do a lot of damage individually? Like, if the person it came from was good at magic. Or something.” The way Keith’s face scrunched as he turned to Lance was odd. Lance felt like there was more in his look than there was in his words. A hint, a warning, maybe a concern. Specifics were written there, ones Keith had failed to mention in his verbal question. He was asking because he’d  _ thought of something. _ The way his dark eyebrows tried to meet at the middle of his face when he frowned was indicative of as much. And when he breathed out of his nose, the air was more baking than it should have been against Lance’s nose, as though the knight was nervous and hot in the face. Lance thought he should have been picking something out of that look or that breath or that question, something he hadn’t already snatched from the surface. There was something underneath the waves of it all, but Lance couldn’t fish it out and he hated the way his brain rattled at the attempt until he began to feel sluggish and mindless. His husband was on the verge of wearing an entirely fretful expression and he couldn’t begin to deduce the reason an innocently curious question came with such a frightened face.

“There’s not a difference that’s all that significant,” he said, hoping the meaningful, but impossible to decipher, look would leave his husband’s face. And, for a moment, it did, as Keith’s face softened and he huffed an easy, relieved sigh. But then Lance foolishly completed his thought. “I mean, I’ve heard that if the source’s attack is used on someone the owner of it was close to, it’s extra powerful. But, really, I think that’s just a theory based off of a pretty sentiment. Some idea that bonds last longer than we do,” he laughed, “so no, I’d say there aren’t sources with more power.” Keith got another strange look upon hearing the theory, despite the reassurance following it. His lips were tightly drawn. The gold of the sun on his skin made him look something of an angel, though apparently a frightened one because his eyes were fogged and downcast. They seemed to shrink back, his whole face doing the same, fading behind the stray hairs that had fallen from his ponytail and over his face. 

“If that is right, though, would yours have an added effect on me?” Lance noted the way Keith dragged his bottom lip between his teeth, turning the faintly pink flesh as snowy as the pale skin of his cheeks. He was picking at that theory. He’d put a lot of stock in it and now he was clinging to it, though Lance couldn’t figure out why. It was hogwash, he was certain. Entirely baseless, without a scrap of evidence to back it up. As he’d said, it was the clinging of a sentimental, old fool to the idea of bonds persisting past death and it was unlikely to be much more. So why was Keith so sharp eyed and quick tongued about pursuing the details of it? The brunet answered his pursuit with a nod that was half a shrug, too. Yet his answer couldn’t reach his own brain effectively enough because he kept having to remind himself that it didn’t matter, because suddenly he was wracked with doubts. Keith was plenty strong enough on his own, anyway, he assured himself. And he had that serum in his veins; it would take a freakishly strong blow of magic to undo the strengths that brought. And yet, the worries wouldn’t leave. Wouldn’t stop puncturing wounds in his lungs that had his intakes of air leaving him breathless, like any oxygen he took in flowed right back out again, before he got what he needed from it. Lance sucked his bottom lip into his mouth, as Keith had done with his own lip earlier. 

Breathing deeply, Lance assured himself it was fine. “Hey, but it doesn’t matter! No one’s trying to kill you, remember?” Lance swung a hand up to pull at the tie in Keith’s hair, tugging until the worn, pseudo-elastic band fell out of place. A cascade of hair fell to join the few strands Keith’s dark eyes were withering behind. Keith seemed to hide even more. The sunlight had swallowed his face now. It was on the ink of his hair like flicks of apricot paint on an ebony canvas; the caps on deep waves if the foam of the water had been lemonade or sweet-scented apple juice instead of saltwater. He looked so pitiful with his broken and fretful gaze, yet so lively with the sparks in his hair. Lance redid the ponytail, more neatly than Keith had done it earlier, and he resumed his whispering. “I know it’s not much consolation, but I’m pretty sure it’s me they’re after, for some reason, so I wouldn’t worry about  _ you _ getting attacked with anything.” His mouth tasted bitter at the admission, like he’d swallowed a bar of soap, and his throat constricted like the bar had gotten stuck there, too. As though his body was trying to hush and silence him because mentioning the truth out in the open was the stark opposite of what he’d been doing with his family. Hiding. Was he hiding now, he wondered. Hiding from the seriousness and the wary sheen in his husband’s eyes, he supposed, as he dodged the flick of Keith’s eyes to his own. Dodged the apprehension in the palms his husband had grappled and wrung together in front of him. Lance peeled them apart gently. “C’mon,” he soothed.

He tugged Keith gingerly forward and there looked to be words on his lips—more concerns, perhaps, arguments about what Lance had last said—but they went unspoken. Those words were kites with tails sewn to his tongue and they never got enough wind, enough air from Keith’s lungs, to fly. They merely hung limply. They merely existed in scrawled chicken scratch across the wrinkles he’d worried into his chin, until Lance gave up on hoping to decipher what Keith could possibly be thinking. 

Focus on the warm sunlight, the peach shades of the sky paralleled across Keith’s skin, not the unspoken words carved in the same spot.

The unspoken words were burrowed deep into Keith’s flesh now, though, and Lance found himself back in a dip of his mood. Up and down. Up and down. Too fast. When had things gotten so impossibly hectic? To lift himself up, out of the mood drop he’d dug himself into, he reminded himself it was only a day’s travel. A day and they’d catch up to their lead and maybe, maybe, they’d piece it all together. Who was after Lance, what the hell had happened to Lotor, and how they could resolve it all. Maybe in two days he’d find himself at the end of this particular collection of struggles. He hoped so, at least, because it was the only thing keeping him from joining Keith in looking so downtrodden and hopeless. The only thing keeping him from getting tossed downstream in his emotions until he drowned in them, in despair, just as their enemy likely wanted. 

It was hard to wedge Keith’s feet from the ground. Like there were nails driven through the soles of his shoes and into the cobblestone beneath. Or maybe there was a loop of yarn around his waist, the opposite end tied to the building he shot his eyes back to every couple of seconds. It took infinite prompting to coax Keith away and even when his feet began to finally move, his lips still clung to the building in an unspoken inquiry. And Lance already knew there was nothing in the universe capable of coaxing an unwanted question out of his husband. 

“Lance,” the man muttered as they’d inevitably reached the edge of the town and the cream, stone fencing around it. It was a questioning utterance and Lance jutted his chin and grunted in acknowledgement of the sound. “I’m worried,” Keith admitted. It took everything in Lance not to dig his heels into the dirt and stop their exit of the town so he could pull his husband into a hug, into some semblance of comfort in all their peril. By the looks of it, Keith was struggling in speaking openly about the issue as much as Lance was struggling to listen without rushing in to help. “I’m used to my life being in danger, but I’m sick of yours being in danger, too. I feel like it’s my fault.” They were going west; the sun was burning from the east against Lance’s neck and it burned more—with concern, with trepidation, with helplessness—as he watched the concerns fleck through the shadows over his husband’s face. In the tangled ends of his hair as they caught on the wind, like drapes by an open window, and scattered over his eyes until Lance couldn’t discern his husband’s expression. “Lance, you were saying earlier,” the words of those kites he’d seen on Keith’s mouth were fluttering out, “that those sources could be more powerful when used on people close to the original owners. What if,” Keith’s voice quaked and died, shrivelled in the rising sun. “What if people are only after you so they can get to me? Or the serum?”

The brunet was hasty to react. His heart was in his lungs, shaking his breath and voice. His heartbeat was erratic and overwhelming, the repetitive pressure on a balloon that pushed his ill-considered words from his clogged chest in a pop and a squeaking wheeze. “What? That’s— that’s not possible. That would be a stupid plan; no one even knows if that theory even  _ works,  _ Keith.” But as his brain caught up with his words and he thought about it. Assuming the theory was correct, it would be the  _ perfect _ plan. That realization was the last puzzle piece, the clear windowpane to replace the filthy, fogged one he’d been watching events unfold through until then. It all fell into place. 

Lance? Lance didn’t make enemies as powerful as the ones they were facing, enemies with armies at their fingertips. Keith, though? He himself didn’t make enemies, either, but his status and the serum forced upon him definitely did. Entire countries, armies, continents, had likely heard of that serum—and the strength of the man wielding it—and everyone who knew of it likely had a desire to carry it in their own veins. Keith had subsequently made an enemy in every one of the people who’d heard of it. And thus, as the person closest to the head knight and the Weapon, Lance had made all those very same enemies. And it was then, upon reaching that exact moment of flawless clarity in which he realized that plausible scenario, Lance saw their present misfortune for the hellfire it was. 

Keith was both a threat and an asset. He was an asset because, even without the serum, his strength was extremely formidable. So, with the serum, he was a useful soldier any kingdom would want on their side. But he was a threat because he was an entirely unattainable asset. The serum was so tightly knitted in his veins, no one other than Keith could ever hope to wield it. Only Haggar had possessed magic knowledge tuned enough to create an object capable of detaching, of unweaving, the serum. That object she’d made and the remainder of her knowledge on removing the serum had long since vanished, so, logically, there shouldn’t have been anyone powerful enough to continue her work. But—Lance brought a hand to his lips as he thought it, nerves quaking down to the tips of each of his fingers—with pure, raw magic, it was entirely possible someone could find a loophole. Maybe not with basic source magic, but with a further boosted kind, like Lance’s if those old tales proved correct, perhaps someone could pry the serum from Keith. Maybe that had been the intention all along.

Gods, what if Keith was right?

“That’s not even,” Lance stopped walking as he stopped talking, and he wedged a toe into the dirt, kicking up plumes of dust and uprooting a small, shrivelled plant. He felt his hopes dwindling like the leaves of that shrub, grey and turning to powder under his foot. “That’s not even possible.” But it was a bitter lie against his tongue. “No one is trying to kill you. Everyone who wanted the serum is dead. You personally took care of Haggar and Lotor is—” heat pooled at the base of Lance’s tongue and he pulled the hand over his lips tighter as he curled upon himself. Tears were in his eyes; he was trying not to gag over the fact that Lotor’s name had fallen from his lips. “There’s no way,” he tapered off as he straightened his spine. Suddenly, he was aware of the fact that his tears were no longer in his eyes, but were now on his cheeks, slobbering down his face in thick trails. Because Keith was  _ right. _ People had consistently gone after Lance, even when Keith was equally vulnerable. They wanted  _ Lance _ for something and it had to be as a means to acquire the serum. 

And just like that, his chest smoldered. It was too hot, too cluttered, too heavy and throbbing; it felt wrong and entirely out of place. The air around him was still laced with the chill of a desert night, like the air that reflected against his cheeks when he might have blown into of a cup of ice water on a hot summer day from his childhood. It was as it should have been at the hour of morning it was. Yet his chest was the opposite, thick and hot, like cake batter after it had been in the oven a quarter of an hour, and it felt like it was oozing down into his stomach until his organs were painted with an anxious tar. The desert under his feet was barren, devoid of all but dirt, aside from the occasional grasshopper fluttering in a jump a few feet ahead. Lance’s chest was unlike that, too. His heart was crowded, clamped by the clutter, but batting like it was a thousand of those restless grasshoppers. His lungs—the throbbing space of what used to be a steady heart between them—felt clogged and it tingled, like Lance had swallowed the very same grasshoppers pumping his blood. He took a few shaky, stumbling, heavy, and dust-scattering steps forward until his ankle buckled in an irrecoverable manner and he toppled to one side. 

His husband was right, wasn’t he?

Said husband caught his shoulder and kept him upright. He’d asked something, but Lance hadn’t heard. “We need to keep moving,” Lance hissed into the hand still wound over his mouth like a face mask barely holding back an infectious disease. His head was angled at the dirt, his spine still curled as though he was about to empty his stomach on the dried plant he’d upturned earlier, and his eyes continued to water. Through the water in his gaze, he could barely identify the outlines of his shoes as anything other than vague, dusty smudges atop more dust. “You’re right, so we have to keep moving.” Warbled and under his breath, not much more than heated breath against his palm, he said, “I can’t let them get to you.”

With a squeeze to Lance’s shoulder, Keith muttered, “Lance, you can’t even stand upright. We’re not moving anywhere.” The brunet sloppily corrected his posture to prove Keith wrong; his lower back quaked from the added weight, as his spine had the durability of a wet roll of paper as he was currently feeling. Perhaps that truly was all it was, a soggy sheet of paper, because his tears had perhaps soaked through his whole body and turned his bones to sop. He shot a weary look at Keith, his eyes round and pathetic in a tangible sort of way. The squeeze on his shoulder tightened. “We could head back to your town for a day. Clear our heads. Strategize?” Lance tore his shoulder away from Keith at that, words billowing to his lips. 

“No! We don’t have time. Every second we waste  _ not _ finding the enemy is a second they have the upper hand and are able to come up with more ways to hurt you.” Lance had a certain look on his face, he could feel his upper lip pull back with an edge of disgust at the realistic concept of Keith being hurt. Yet the curl of Keith’s mouth was far worse. Whereas Lance’s expression was the flinch from a sour lemon, Keith’s was a desperate sort of angry. His eyes were bright with distressed tears and his face was covered in the dull, shadowed outlines of clouds above him, so his eyes were like a dwindling candle catching on the wind in the dark. His eyebrows came down to meet his lashes as his mouth curled upon itself into a frown. 

“Me? Lance, for the love of—” he whispered, then his voice spiked to a normal volume. “You’re in so much more danger! Don’t worry about me!” He wore his anger on his sleeve for only a few moments more, until it waded out into the sea of his deep eyes. The eyes that no longer flickered with anger, like a torch’s reflection on a charcoal ocean’s waves, but now shuddered again. They shuddered with a plea, one that was spelled out when Keith reached his left hand to where Lance had retreated and, in hushed tones, said, “please, Lance. Look out for yourself.” The knight’s hand tumbled over Lance’s cheek, as warm as the overheated heart in the mage’s chest, and it stayed there, even as Lance shook his head. The brunet’s hand rose to cup his husband’s, fingers trailing over the loop of gold on Keith’s finger. He tapped it a few times while mouthing silent words.  _ I promised. _ That ring was a symbol of a promise to keep his husband safe, to help him as best as he could, to put him first, and he couldn’t fathom betraying it. Keith tightened his hold on Lance’s cheek and his right hand lifted to scoop the back of Lance’s neck. “No,  _ we _ promised. I’m going to look out for you, too.” Lance nodded, reluctant at the implication of the sacrifice going both ways, but tired of disputing it. It was a fruitless battle, one thing neither he nor Keith would ever give in on. No amount of emotional pushing, reasoning,  _ anything, _ would amount to an inch given or gained on the matter. It was two deeply rooted plants with leaves that brushed together, frail and trying to shove each other away to no avail. Neither of them had winning arguments. “Now let’s get moving. The sooner we get there, the better.” 

The walk was silent for a while after that. No complaints about how hot the sun was starting to get, no more reassurances, no shared stories or chatting. Silence. Lance found himself kicking at pebbles and diverting his trail to meet back up with the stones to kick them again, merely so he could distract himself from the itch of the silence under his skin. It was a tangible kind of quiet. A pressure against the back of his tongue, a wad of nerves that had gotten caught there and had sewn itself to his flesh. A hand in his gut, wrenching and winding its way up to his chest to squeeze at his heart, as if testing to see if it was ripe enough to be plucked like fruit from a tree. It was a tightness in his throat, a rock blocking his windpipe, because it wasn’t just Keith not speaking; he was wordless, too. And it made him feel empty. He got sick of it, a physical kind of want-to-retch kind of sick, and he started to blurt. 

He talked about meaningless things, blabbed his husband’s ears off about them. His fingers pointed to lizards he saw scuttling nearby and he quietly muttered the names of their species. He mentioned which of the flowers they passed were his favorites, named a couple recipes using some under his breath. There was a lemon tree on their path up ahead and he started to ramble about the lemonade his mother always made when it got too hot. About the blistering, sweltering days from his youth, when he’d spent huddled in the shade around the town bar, where his parents chatted with friends until the evening on holidays. About how he crept back under the cast shadow of the bar’s overhang with a cup of iced lemonade between his palms, a pitcher of it between his ankles, and a sibling or a cousin on either side, all of them waiting for the adults to finish their celebration while too tired to run about or play. About how those flowers he’d mentioned earlier, his favorites, were the ones his mother used to add to the lemonade, his salvation in the sun. How that was why they were his favorites at all. How his mother used to grow them in a garden at the front of their house and when they bloomed, she’d pick a few and decorate the dining room table, weave them into her hair, and tuck them behind Lance’s ears. The way Lance swore sometimes, even back in Castle Town, the backs of his ears were stained with the scent of desert pollen. He laughed a little at his drama, but Keith only got as far in his laugh as a harsh suck in and a single sharp breath out. 

At some point, not too long after that, it became apparent to Lance that Keith was only partially listening. From the corner of his line of sight, Lance could see the knight had tugged the thumb of one hand to his lips, to worry his nail between his teeth, and the other was wrestling with his hair. He was murmuring something around the bit of his thumb he’d grasped in his mouth; his lips were twitching around the words and Lance squinted in an attempt to get a read of what he was saying without revealing he’d noticed anything at all. Keith was wallowing, drowning, suffocating in whatever it was he was saying because his cheeks were red from lack of air and his hands visibly trembled. Lance inched closer to Keith, trying to catch if he was saying anything audibly or if he was mouthing his concerns to no one but himself. The words were nothing comprehensible, mere breaths of panicked air, so Lance stepped closer still to watch the unfurling of Keith’s lips with every repetition of the unknown phrase. The knight’s eyes had shut and his hands had risen to grasp his upper arms, crossed over his armored chest like a second layer of a shield.

Lance’s chest ached when he watched his husband’s head fall forward, neck weak, shoulders up around his ears, and nails digging into the fabric of the undershirt uncovered by his shoulder plates. The mage’s hands grappled together and his nails clawed through the skin of his palms when he saw a trail of water running along the side of Keith’s nose from the corner of his eye. Stubbornly yanking a wrist up to the underside of his nose, Keith attempted to mask the fact that he was crying. He sighed, though and a piece of what he’d been mouthing to himself got enough wind to make sound.  _ Fault. _ Lance’s mind swarmed with the word, like it was the lettering on a roll of police tape wrapped around his brain thirty times over. His head burned, a migraine beginning to claw its way through the tape and to the front of his skull, as he thought about the one word he’d made out.

_ Fault. _

His own mouth began to wrap around the word as Keith’s had and it had the same stifling effect on his own lungs and he began to feel out of breath, too. Because it was such a heavy word. It was the pointing of fingers, the shift of the weight of a mistake onto his back. It was heavy and he was out of breath from carrying it around in his lungs, not letting it leave the top of his throat on the waves of any of his exhalations. He was out of breath from carrying it in his skull, clinking back and forth between his ears as he refused to say it, but kept thinking it and mouthing it. 

He took another step closer to Keith, a hand flinging cautiously out to prod at his husband’s wrist, to take it between his fingers and his palm. The man jolted upright, head stirring and shaking free of the embrace it had been in with his shoulders. He turned to Lance, eyes wide and startled, as though he’d forgotten Lance was there. Lance watched Keith’s eyes pool with more water and he saw his husband clench his jaw, as though to will his eyes to hold it all in. It was hardly successful. Lance tugged a hand, the one he’d been holding Keith’s forearm in, to rest on the back of his husband’s neck as they walked and he carded his fingers through the hair at the ends of the ponytail tickling his wrist. “Lance,” Keith muttered, guilt palpable in his tone. His voice was weighed down, lower in pitch and it rose from Keith’s stomach more than the air in his lungs. It landed in Lance’s stomach, too. “It’s all my fault,” the knight said, and Lance began to grasp the implication behind the word he’d caught earlier. The second his mind caught up, he sucked a mouthful of air to begin protesting the statement. He shook his head, darting around his husband to stand in front of him and to halt his forward pace. Keith shook his head in return. “No, it is! If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even have to be here right now! You wouldn’t have gotten captured six months ago, you wouldn’t have almost drowned yesterday, you wouldn’t have people after you.” He tugged his gaze away from the hold Lance’s eyes had on it, head turned to the side and chin jutting towards the dirt. “It’s  _ all  _ my fault, Lance.”

The brunet frantically shook his head again. “It’s not, Keith.” His actions were hasty and heavy; they were solid yanks of his head back and forth, steady gripping of his hands on the back of Keith’s neck as he held him steady, and steps forward with all of his body weight. Yet his words were soft and whispered and they gently brushed along Keith’s cheeks and caressed the bridge of his nose as Lance leaned forward to chase after where Keith had angled his line of sight. “You didn’t ask for the serum, Keith. You didn’t ask for  _ any _ of this. It’s not your fault.” The stress was getting to Keith, the panic had wormed its way under his skin, the dread was legible in the wrinkle of his furrowed brows, because none of Lance’s words were getting through to Keith. The knight didn’t lift his gaze from the dirt and his eyes continued to leak. Their dark, vast oceans were spilling their saltwater down Keith’s cheeks. “Keith,” Lance murmured, slipping his hand from behind Keith’s neck to the side of it, so he could press along his husband’s cheekbones with his thumbs. 

Keith trailed his gaze over Lance’s shoulder, but he wouldn’t meet the brunet’s eyes. Lance whined, unintentionally, behind his closed lips. He needed to lock eyes; it was the only way he could convey the sincerity in his words. His hand drifted higher up Keith’s face, a vain attempt to drag his husband’s gaze back down to him. Keith scoffed, shoulders shrinking up around his ears as he shoved Lance’s hand away with a rough swing of his chin. “Sorry,” he said, too unfeeling and curt. “We should keep moving.” Something fiery shot up Lance’s spine in response to the way Keith had brushed him off, and it filled his mouth with the urge to argue. 

_ Not until you know it’s not your fault. _

That was what he wanted to say.

_ Not until you know I don’t blame you. _

That, too, was what he longed to quip back.

_ We’re not pushing these discussions off any longer. _

That was what he desired to adamantly shout most. Because they’d put too much off for too long. Before Lance was certified, for literal years, he’d kept being a fugitive a secret from his husband and it had nearly cost both of them their lives. It was a large enough indication to Lance that the ability to keep secrets was a luxury they didn’t have. He’d almost lost too much from it already. Pushing off this discussion was something he wasn’t willing to do. He wasn’t willing to shuck it off his shoulders and pass it over, to let his husband carry the entirety of the burden of the blame because it was, undoubtedly, too much weight to be on only his shoulders; he’d fall apart under it. And he wanted to shout about it. He wanted to declare his support with every muscle in his body, every beat of his heart, and every breath in his lungs. He wanted to tell Keith it wasn’t his fault until his breath was gone and his heart was hammering from lack of oxygen, until his muscles ached with exertion. 

And yet, all that tumbled past his lips was a weak cry of the knight’s name, tone pleading and pitiful, with furrowed brows and watering, desperate eyes. Eyes Keith still had failed to meet. Eyes that swept over Keith’s lids and lashes, over the skin on his cheeks, and the tremble of his chin, as though he’d find the secret to starting this conversation tattooed on the flesh in any of those places. “I can’t make you not blame yourself,” he murmured, and the eyes he’d been chasing lifted, lashes brushing brows as Keith finally worked up the motivation to look at Lance. “But know that I don’t blame you for a second.” Keith’s gaze softened a tad, eyes crinkling around the edges in a faint smile. He sniffed before the smile grew barely larger. Lance decided his husband looked great like that, despite the blotchiness to his cheeks and the crust clinging to the ends of his lashes. The sight was enough to calm him, even if only slightly. But his comforting couldn’t be done yet, not until Keith could find the strength to stand fully upright again. 

So, Lance breathed in, equipping himself for a sigh that was halfway relieved and halfway barreling himself further into distress, but he wrinkled his nose at the taste that hit his tongue. Dirt, dust, filth, the common scents of his childhood surrounded by neighbors and family members who tore up layers of the desert. Scents which, on their own, weren’t odd for the location, but which were odd for the circumstances. Twirling the direction opposite his husband—west, where they’d been headed before—Lance realized as much. There wasn’t a breeze to knock any of the dirt he was inhaling loose. He and Keith were standing still. No one else was around, not an animal or a person to be seen, and, even so, a plume of dust had risen from where it had been settled maybe twenty feet away. It kicked a couple feet closer before sinking to the ground again. Lance narrowed his stare at the drifting cloud. Keith caught the meaning behind tense muscles in his shoulders and, dimly, the brunet became aware of a hand splayed across his back, slipping up to grip his shoulder firmly. “Lance?” The brunet shook his head, eyes sewn shut as he dismissed the concern in his husband’s tone. But he couldn’t dismiss the concern within his own accelerating pulse when another handful’s worth of dust sprang from the ground and settled once more a few feet closer. He felt a chill run up his back and when the shudder reached the top of his spine, it crashed into the base of his skull like a key being forced into place. Lance watched another puff of dust rise and fall, newfound theory rolling in his head and when the dust settled again, he knew. The shifting of dirt was alternating between on the right and on the left, at the distance and pace of—

Footsteps.

Something got hot in Lance’s chest, something molten or fresh from an oven, and it burned its way down to his feet. His flight response triggered and his toes started to itch with the need to run. “Keith,” he whispered, turning back to face the man. He grasped his palm over Keith’s nape to tug him closer, to bring his ear to his lips so he could speak without someone—because there most certainly  _ was _ someone—hearing. “Look over my shoulder. Calmly.” The knight’s face hardened and one of his hands lowered to his blade, while the one on Lance’s shoulder clenched. While Keith was assessing the stray dirt and reaching his own, likely similar, conclusions, Lance did his best to make a mental checklist of their surroundings. What he could and couldn’t use in a fight. “I think someone’s there,” he said, voice distant as he counted nearby trees and bushes (potential weapons, if he set them aflame, or diversions if he threw them at the enemy, or maybe, maybe, maybe—his head was reeling). A collection of shrubbery a tad over thirty feet away, barely large enough to conceal someone, was about all he had to work with. 

Keith hissed, “shit,” and he unsheathed his blade, crushing Lance’s goal of keeping their enemy unaware of how they had gained knowledge on their presence. “Stay back,” he growled, low and quiet enough for no one farther than five yards to hear. Lance pivoted on his heel to face the same direction as Keith, palms sparking with electricity magic and eyes sparking with all the ferocity of an animal backed into a corner. His nose folded over itself a bit at the bridge, the corner of his lip pulled back, and his eyes squinted, until his features gave the warning Keith’s words had. Another puff of dust bursted from the ground and Lance failed to resist the jerk of his head forward as another panicked shudder ran up his neck. 

So focused on the approaching dirt clouds, moving more and more hastily, Lance almost missed the thud of  _ true _ footsteps from the collection of shrubs he’d accounted for earlier. He shouted Keith’s name when he heard it, realizing the dirt shuffling had been a mere diversion for someone hiding in those plants, but he didn’t finish the cry before there was a dangerous hold grappling his nape. Didn’t even have a chance to spin and see his opponent. His cry was muffled, warped, and blended with a shout of pain as his face was shoved to the ground with the hand along his neck. Keith grunted next to him, sounding similarly pained, and Lance realized whomever had taken him down had caught Keith unsuspecting, too. 

There was a guffawing laugh, one that rumbled into the fingers digging into Lance’s windpipe and a bellow of, “I got ‘em!” Another laugh, airy and shrill, came from where the dust had risen earlier. Lance hissed and flattened his palms along the dirt in a useless attempt to force himself up and back against the squeeze over his neck. The hold there only tightened, slid further forward to cut off his air, until the brunet sputtered, suffocating, and collapsed into the dirt once more. Lance had only lifted his head enough to catch a glimpse of the brightly colored shins of the chipper laugher. A shade somewhere between orange and pink, but far too vibrant to be considered a salmon. No matter who the person was, though, he knew it was no one he’d met. And any stranger who trapped him, cornered him, and forcibly cut off his air supply was a stranger he was certain he couldn’t trust. 

“You know,” the source of the shrill laugh said, voice a sweet, candy-like venom. “It was dearly touching to see your support of one another, but it’s all a little useless.” There was another giggle, another rumble behind him a second lagged behind, and the foot attached to the bright shin tapped a few times. Lance was yanking his head up form the ground, rocking it back against the wrist of the grip on his nape, but he was met with another bout of suffocation. Crumpling, his cheek slammed into the dirt just in time to hear, “you’re both going to be dead by the end of this, anyway.” 

And, as easily as the sweat trickled from the hair behind his ears, panic flourished anew. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaa I don’t rlly like this chapter all that much tbh, but tell me what you thought!


	8. Guilt Remains an Undefeatable Foe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long....... and I'm still gonna be so busy........... I got super sick in the middle of writing this, so I can blame some of my slowness on that I guess haha  
> anyway!! Please lemme know if any of this update has errors or doesn't make sense :)  
> AND FEEL FREE TO SEND ASKS INTO [MY TUMBLR](https://cakepopple.tumblr.com/) I WILL ANSWER THEM :)))

Through the ringing of his ears, Lance could manage to hear Keith hissing vulgarities next to him. In a moment, Lance had craned his neck to get a look at his husband, the pair wearing matching dusty cheeks and licking the dirt off their lips in time with one another. Lance blinked filth from his eyes, lashes swiping more of the ground onto his eyelids as he did, and he tried to get a clear look at Keith’s position. The knight’s arms were pinned under his chest and he was wriggling, writhing, and kicking his feet about in a pointless attempt to free them. His armor clattered against his sword in the struggle, but the enemy had their fingers—ones Lance could barely see from his vantage point—in a firm grip on Keith’s nape. The desperation, the flailing desperation, of his husband almost made Lance throw his caution to the wind. Almost made him surrender his intention to formulate a strategy, in favor of blind attacks at their opponents, if only so he could save his lover from more struggling. 

Sucking in a breath, he tried to wrestle his own hands from under his torso. It was useless and the realization of as much made Lance stop struggling instantly, tilting his nose back to the dirt beneath him. If he kept still, the enemies wouldn’t expect him to fight back later, should the opening arise. Or at least that was his hope. Keith hadn’t thought the same, though, it seemed, as he was still spitting fire, still flinging his legs about, and still kicking dust into the air. He cussed and, in a powerful surge back against the grasp of his neck, Keith managed to lift himself a mere inch above the ground. The knight was slammed back against the dirt, another swear fizzing from his lips as his cheek got scuffed up by the pebbles among the dust. Lance tried to tilt his gaze back to Keith, to make sure he was alright, but his face was shoved down the moment his neck twitched to lift it. 

He tasted dirt on his tongue, he cursed as it burned the inside of his nose, he ached as it began to feel as though it was caking the walls of his lungs. And that was all he could think about, despite his best efforts to focus on a way out of where they were. Salt dripped down his temple and to his lips, carried by sweat, and then  _ that _ taste was all he could focus on. He berated himself in his attempt to refocus, and was so focused on that, he failed to truly focus yet again. It wasn’t until he saw the feet in front of him, the ones with shins that shone bright colors, begin to move, that he woke from startled and panicked distraction. After that, Lance was straining to hear any sounds to piece together whatever solutions he could. 

Over the vulgarities Keith was spouting, he heard the bright enemy’s footsteps. Stepping closer, then slipping around Lance’s side, then, presumably, behind the other enemy. Until the pads of footsteps stopped and the vulgarities sprang higher in volume. Then those stopped, too, cut in half by the sound of an unsheathing sword. A scrape that, in the moment, sounded far worse than nails on a chalkboard ever could. A chill ran up Lance’s spine. There was a twitch in his palms as he wriggled, mindlessly attempting to cover his ears as the blade was drawn, attempting to escape the noise and the fear. While clenching his jaw, he tried to block out all sounds for the few seconds the sword was maneuvered in its covering. But the moment that sound ended, another noise, even worse, rustled the air. The tap of the tip of the blade against something else metal; the aim of the blade against Keith’s armor. 

Lance’s spine jolted instinctively. An injection of adrenaline turned his skin molten and his gut inside out. His head rocked up with a defensive surge, a need to get Keith out from under the sharp point of an enemy’s blade, and he shouted something far more vulgar than anything Keith had previously been spouting. In fact, his burst of an uproar was so sudden and violent, he’d found a lack of fingers on his nape, where they’d previously been immovably settled. His arms wedged out from under his stomach—which he’d raised an inch or so from the ground in his panic—and he bent them around his back to fling a haphazard spell at his captors. The tingle of an electricity spell barely wormed its way past his wrist before the hand priorly around his neck reasserted itself over his arm. Both of his wrists were snatched and pinned against his lower back, under his drawstring bag, with hasty dexterity. Nonetheless, Lance writhed and swung his head wildly about, praying for a sudden opening because Keith had gone eerily silent.

Spitting on his lips to let dirt drip off, Lance shouted his husband’s name. “Keith, are you—” A grunt, perhaps a scoff, sounded to his side and it only provided comfort in the sense that it meant Keith was alive. Reinvigorated a tad by the reassurance of his husband’s life being, to some degree, intact, Lance tried to tug his hands free of the pinning grip on his wrists. His fingers crackled with an impatient electricity spell, but the enemy holding him growled and dropped their hold the moment he craned his fingers to touch their skin with it. A bubble of hope bloomed in his gut—because he naively thought he was free—and, as it popped, the hope coated his stomach with a thick film of determination that stirred him to curl his spine in an attempt to get up again. 

After a shuffle behind him, the clank and rustle of metal armor and fabric, his aim to escape was thwarted. Crunched beneath his captor’s foot in the most literal of senses, as a foot, shielded in a casing of metal armor, had come heavily down on his arms. With a pop. A snap. Just like that, one of his arms was full of shooting, all-consuming pain in an instant. He swore the bottom of the crashed boot had been heated too much by the desert sun and was burning the flesh of his forearm, sizzling the insides of his wrist. Yet the sickening sound of a bone fracturing from before told him the sweltering hiss of fire on his arm wasn’t that. No, that was the burn of his left arm becoming entirely useless with a nasty, long term fracture. 

The shock of that realization, though maybe much of it was merely the pain arriving with it, went straight to his chest. The pain went to his heart; the organ began to throb and overexert itself in his chest. His pulse reverberated between his elbow and his wrist, it burnt like a match had been snuffed between what was now, undoubtedly, the two halves of his formally whole bone. But the pain also went to his lungs; his lungs expelled oxygen with a scream. The air had been squeezed out of him as though it were the last bit of toothpaste in a tube and nothing more, a quiet and weak cry. Worst of all, though, the pain went to his throat; it constricted every bit of oxygen he tried to get back in his lungs. He had nothing with which he could replenish his pained howling, so his voice crackled off into silence.

All he could manage was a spare whimper.

In his silence, Keith spoke. Frantically, panting and hissing, the knight snapped words instead of the cusses he’d previously been spewing. “Lance?” The brunet hissed to indicate he was alive, but he could indicate none of the wellness he knew Keith hoped for. “What was that snap?” Lance was certain his husband knew what it was, so he elected to remain silent. The dumbass knew what a broken bone sounded like; he’d been fighting and breaking people’s bones his whole life. And, luckily, silence seemingly earned him some temporary mercy, because pressure was easing off his arm. He licked his lips as the pain in his arm ebbed into something dull and bearable. Keith remained hushed, but began to speak again, “Lance, are you—” The man in question bit his tongue when a muscle around the injury twitched, when pain blossomed anew, and he swallowed another agonized shriek down. Keith heard his faint whimper and silenced. However, when the heel on Lance’s wrist lifted and fell again with renewed strength, twisting and curling in its descent, he couldn’t keep an all out wail at bay. 

As he choked on shouts, he wet the dirt with spit and dusted his lips with clumps of dust as he pushed his head to the ground to muffle the sounds of his screaming. “C’mon,” someone behind him said, and the squeeze of his fractured bone deepened. He screeched again, but his yelp frayed at the end like an old knot and his voice disappeared. “You heard him, Lance. What was that sound?” Lance hissed as pain began to fade again, but a repeated stomp brought life to his vocal chords again. “I can break something else, if you need a reminder—” Lance’s skin itched with a burning pain at the implication, but his husband cut the suggestion off. 

“Fuck off! Leave him alone!” Yet his threats were empty and they withered into the grinding of teeth. He returned to silence when the noise of blade against armor came again, a threatening clack to remind Keith of the circumstances they were in. It was a reminder that he had no room to make any demands. It was followed by murmurs from their captors, words back and forth between the two in tones slightly too quiet for Lance to hear. At the end of the whispers, the heel was removed from atop him and he was lifted from the ground by a sloppy hold on his nape. His arm went limp, falling to his side in a manner that irritated his injury and made him exhale shakily. Throat constricting to mask his pain, he kept from screeching again. It was all he could do to keep quiet, to keep from worrying Keith, so he hardly had the chance to fight back as he was shifted to be tossed from one captor to another. 

His eyes were bleary. His vision shook, as though it was soup in a bowl balanced precariously on a tray, carried by a clumsy waiter, and sloshed back and forth. Lance felt how his situation was similarly teetering on the edge of disaster and ruin. His brain was fogged with that concern, but he remembered Keith’s similarly bleak situation and turned his eyes to the knight flattened on the dirt. Keith had a sword from their enemies—which was broad and sharpened, wider and arrow shaped at the top, but which tapered off into a narrower blade with an ebony hilt that was far from ornate—to the hairline on his neck, and every time he shifted, the blade was jerked forward to prick his skin. Subsequently, there were beads of crimson turning to streaks around the circumference of his neck as they were tugged downward and around by gravity. They became beads once again when they hit the dirt and pooled. And still, the knight persisted. His shoulders jostled because he refused to give up on getting his arms and hands free and he tugged at them, against the foot pinning him down. It was the foot connected to the brightly colored shin Lance had seen before.

Lance was being passed to that captor and he got a shaky look at her face as he was tossed over. From the second of vision he attained, he pieced together that she wasn’t from Altea. Her skin was a shade of pink that wasn’t like anyone he’d seen before; no one in any part of Altea he’d been to had skin so warmly colored. It glinted in the desert sun as light caught at the corners of her lemon yellow eyes and the silver blue of her irises. The gold of her eyes was mirrored by the streaks of neon yellow at her brow, and complemented by the soft purple farther towards her ears on her forehead. Her whole face had been beading with sweat when Lance spotted her, drops of it seemingly snagging on the light across her nose. Similarly, her sweat trickled down the neon collection of perhaps hair—Lance was entirely assuming because of the blurriness of his sight and the scarcity of human terms applicable to the woman’s form—down her back. Though it was the same shade and had the same weight as her limbs, judging by the way she carried herself, so Lance doubted hair was exactly it. It had to be a tail or another limb of some sort. She flicked the saltwater trailing along her scalp with her wrist to mop it up before she took Lance and slung him over her shoulder carelessly. Pain ran its course up Lance’s arm as she did, eliciting a sweaty, dirt tasting whimper. 

Through the fogged windowpane of agony, Lance did his best to make calculations about his surroundings, glowering past his watering eyes to do so. The woman holding him shuffled some, muttering a sentence, one muffled by Lance’s pain-addled brain, about the sword in her grasp. Lance watched her pass the mentioned weapon to the other captor. To the other captor who had broad shoulders and equally un-Altean features. A pale, blue, stern visage. Vibrantly pink ears, like mixed with a drip of white paint and thus less overwhelming than the pink of her companion’s skin, which hung largely and sideways out from her cheekbones. Most notably, though, an empty sheath on her waist, which she quickly filled with the blade she’d been passed. And then she bent forward to grasp at Keith’s nape again, wrestling him over her shoulder. Keith went. Cussing and kicking and grappling for his sword, he went. His nails clawed at the wider woman with vigor and animosity, digging red trails into her velvety neck. Yet the enemy was unphased and began a leisurely conversation with her smaller companion, whose shoulder Lance remained slung across.

Wrinkling his nose and biting back a hiss at how easily he and his husband had been captured, the brunet began to strategize. Kicking would do nothing, as both of the enemies seemed immune to frivolous and weak attacks like that. Punching was out of the picture, too, since the woman had armor to protect her backside from blows. Speaking of, the mage felt the leather armor along her spine every time his arms were tugged uselessly downwards by gravity and his palms tapped against it. Leather meant an electricity spell wouldn’t work there, not like it would, boosting and spreading, with metal armor. After all, leather wasn’t conductive enough to do any real damage and Lance’s reach was short of hitting any flesh with his fingertips. Well, no, Lance knew his left arm was  _ capable  _ of bending up to hit the back of the woman’s neck, but it was pulsating and screeching with pain. Bending the arm was impossible enough, so conjuring a spell through those muscles was utterly preposterous. 

Then again, if that was what had to be done, he would do it. 

Electricity was a fruitless effort, but perhaps not all spells were. He’d cast a fire spell the other night, after almost drowning, so surely he could reattempt the spell now and likely yield better results. If he aimed right, if he kept his efforts on the down-low, he could undoubtedly catch part of this woman’s clothing aflame. Subsequently, he could cause a distraction or fabricate a reason to be put down. And that would give him enough of an edge to pull an escape off. At that thought, Lance cupped his right palm, his good arm’s hand, over one of his captor’s armored shoulder blades. Not even a flinch from her. He let heat well up at the top of his arm, then let it drizzle down to his fingertips until the dull beginning of a flame started to shrink the woman’s leather armor. Leather wasn’t particularly flammable, but her undershirt looked to be.

At first, the woman did nothing. She knew nothing of the flames slowly carving through more and more of her leather backside. The fire sizzled near silently and its heat was likely small and insignificant enough so as to be mistaken for nothing more than a patch of desert sunlight. It could have been mistaken for as much until it began to swallow her undershirt, that is. The moment her undershirt began to smolder, Lance dropped his hand to hang limply again and ceased his spellcasting. He licked his lips as some smug form of anticipation climbed his throat and sketched devious laughter against the base of his tongue; it was all he could do to keep the incriminating giddiness at bay. He’d gotten away with his escape plan so far and success felt so close. He watched the flame grow with a heavy, eager pulse and baited breath. 

Soaking into the softer fabric, the heat easily climbed to the base of her neck and it swept over the exposed flesh there just as easily. Seemingly confused, the woman brushed her fingers across the spot. The very instant the pads of her fingers hit the flames along her undershirt, panic filled her form like it was the sand in an hourglass whose funnel was a tad too big; all the dread poured down her neck at once. Her shoulders got tense and Lance could feel her pulse stutter, then rev, beneath the palm he’d let fall over her back. His own heart did the same, expectancy climbing a hot trail into his mouth and swelling his tongue. He licked the cracking skin over his lips again, but bit his tongue when the woman carrying him screeched and tossed him to the ground. Lance hit the dirt with a horrendously loud sound and an even more unbearable, scorching pain in his forearm. He’d landed on it and his breathing went shallow. Nonetheless, he forced himself to scramble a foot or so away from the woman beginning to swat at the back of her neck. 

“Shit,” she hissed, spinning on her heel like a dog chasing its tail and patting her neck with jittery palms. “Zethrid, put it out! Holy shit! For the love of—” Lance watched, his fist going white from clenching around his injured arm, as the other woman—Zethrid—tossed Keith to the dirt like a sack, before she sprinted over to her companion. She asked frantic questions while batting at the burnt patch of skin on the bright woman’s neck, but Lance didn’t waste time watching the scene unfold; he scuttled to Keith. He scraped streaks of blood into his palms when he scratched along stones, and he wedged dirt up under his nails when he dug his fingers into the ground as leverage to crawl faster. He was utterly, tangibly desperate to help his husband.

Upon getting to the knight, however, it became apparent Keith wasn’t in need of any help. The man had leapt up, sword sliding free of its sheath, the moment Zethrid threw him to the ground. His stance widened, his shoulders squared, and his eyes narrowed, but the second Lance wobbled to his feet next to him, Keith’s sword arm drooped a few degrees. His eyes swept over Lance’s arm, the wounded one the mage had yet to pull from cradled against his chest, and Keith’s stance all but crumbled. He gave a sad utterance of Lance’s name as he unfurled the fingers of his non dominant hand in the direction of the injury. It was a gesture completed so gingerly, Lance swore he could already taste tears dripping onto his lips. He shot his husband a look that seemed purely pathetic, a weak attempt at looking fierce, but the flick of his head at their enemies was enough to remind his husband of where their focus had to be. Keith reluctantly sucked his bottom lip into his mouth, hissing, and faced the duo opposite them.

By then, Zethrid had successfully snuffed the flames along the other captor’s neck, but a new fire started to roar in her lungs—she began to shout. Lance hardly had a chance to stumble back, let alone pick apart what slurred words she had shouted, before she was charging his way with a blade held hotly and aggressively in her hand. He twirled out of the way, far from elegantly, yet she followed. So did her blade. It swept dangerously close to Lance’s collarbones and the next strike came even closer. Panting, Lance knew another swing of her heavy blade would be his downfall and panic dripped down the back of his neck like boiling jelly at the realization. Right as the next jab came, though, another parried. The two swords screeched as they crashed down and scraped together. At the end, it was Zethrid’s weapon that hit the dirt and sent a spurt of dust upwards. 

Keith had been the one to cause it. He’d heaved his whole body weight into a swing of his blade atop hers, pushing with enough speed and force to drive hers down before it could touch Lance. And he’d had a look on his face as he’d done it, as well as a shout that consumed the air with rage. “Stay back!” Loose bits of his hair fell, clumps of leftover dirt and all, over his eyes. It shaded his cheeks. It trailed over the soft tip of his nose and collected more dust. It tickled his lips and caught on his tongue as he tried to push it away. The hairs freed from his ponytail, distraught and tangled over his face, gave him a crazed look that likely wasn’t all that inaccurate. Desperation had a way of bringing the monsters out of people, after all. And thus, his wild form paused in Lance’s line of sight for only a moment, eyes darting to Lance’s face for an equally brief and fleeting a second of calmness, before they darted irrationally forward once more, blade twirling in heavy swings. Zethrid unsheathed her blade to begin to return the attacks, to counter them with some of her own, but Keith made certain all she had time for was blocking. He kept batting Zethrid back, driving her to stumble over her heels across the dirt, and he didn’t let the woman gain an inch of space. Didn’t let her get a second of silence either, as he continued to shout angered, vulgar phrases in her face. 

Lance regarded his husband with awe. Then Keith was off again, sword whipping precisely once more, which Lance only got the chance to watch for a few seconds, before the other captor came up behind him. Scrambling out of the way of a magic attack she launched at his unsuspecting backside, Lance spun to fling his focus where it needed to be: away from Keith and on his own enemy. She was flinging dark magic, swirls of smoky ink that would undoubtedly smolder against Lance’s clothing and skin, should they make contact. They landed and hissed around his ankles and whizzed loudly past his ears like hornets. They popped and crackled as they lodged themselves in the dirt around his feet, heating Lance’s pants before they fizzed out. As with Zethrid’s sword earlier, the blasts of smoke balls got closer and closer as time went on. Soon enough, a shot any closer would yield disaster.

Because, as he’d explained to Keith earlier, the equal nature of the spells meant a hit would result in not only his own injuries, but the healing of hers. Meaning, if he made significant strides with her and landed solid, wounding strikes, it would all be for naught the moment she hit back. One strike of hers on Lance could heal untold amounts of Lance’s strikes on her. It put the brunet at a severe disadvantage, to say the least. A pit of anxiety coursed through his chest and left his stomach feeling sick, his brain too slow to properly strategize. He had one arm at the moment, the other entirely incapable of so much as functioning as he clutched it to be crowded by his thundering heart. Even so, his success was hinged on an ability to come out unscathed. Otherwise victory was likely impossible. 

Toeing the line between dodging and merely running away, Lance dug his heel and all his weight into the ground, spinning himself to face the direction Keith had gone. He couldn’t go on the offensive with both arms out of commission. One, for all effects and purposes, dead, and the other much the same, as it was occupied with keeping the first to his chest. So, he settled for running. Running straight to Keith because he had a plan. He flicked dirt with the toes of his shoes, but he managed to make it to the other half of the battlefield at a record speed. “Let’s trade!” He barrelled towards the swinging blades, hissing his battle suggestion, when he caught up to his husband. His useless arm dropped to his side with a muted scream, but it was what had to be done to free his working hand enough to launch a spell. An electricity spell that narrowly missed Keith to splatter across the chestplate of his husband’s foe. The chestplate that so happened to be entirely metal. 

Lance bit back a cheer as Zethrid stumbled back, dropped her blade, and howled in pain. Clearly, if he fought this opponent, he’d easily attain the upper hand. A point well verified by the manner in which his enemy quickly took a knee and clutched her chest, out of breath and wincing with twitching lips. Hasty, uneven, and stumbling footsteps made their way up behind Lance, but Keith darted around him to halt the other foe’s approach. She was shouting at her companion, a certain recklessness in her voice. She wasn’t bothering to attack Keith, she was merely trying to step around him to get to her ally. She wasn’t thinking strategically, she was thinking emotionally; she was acting the way Lance had seen in himself acting when it came to Keith’s life being in danger. A tidbit of information he filed away as an advantage later on. Through her agonized screeches, her shrill cries of her partner’s name, Zethrid growled a reply that redirected Lance’s attention and put him back on his toes. “I’m fine, Ezor.” So, it wasn’t over yet, huh? 

No problem.

At least he’d found an opponent he was at an advantage fighting.

The mage nodded for his husband to take Ezor down, hopefully speaking of his competence to Keith with his eyes. “Are you sure, Lance? She’s almost twice your size.” Ezor was preparing another attack, but Keith put off facing her. He met Lance’s eyes with a palpable concern in his own, a murky layer atop his already dark eyes. His lips quivered as his tongue darted mindlessly across the dirt along them. The slip of his tongue over his lips seemed to scrawl words there. Questions of certainty in Lance’s adamant suggestion, deeply carved shouts of his nerves and fear over leaving Lance with someone likely strong enough to crush him under her heel, and his protective drive; those were the words written so anxiously and sloppily there. All those words were stapling his heels to the dust. But Lance nodded, and Keith reluctantly began to peel his feet free. 

“It’s the best strategy. My magic is best against her armor,” he jerked his shoulder to the broader, metal covered woman, who was slowly rising from her wounded kneel, “and your sword can cut through her armor in a way my magic can’t,” he finished, gesturing to Keith’s reassigned opponent. That settled the issue enough to send Keith back into battle, sword poised high and gathering sunlight over his head. It glinted the same as the angered glow in his eyes, like it was fresh from the forge, and Lance swore it scorched the earth as it fell down with a crash. He watched Ezor leap back onto teetering ankles as she stumbled away from Keith’s aggressive swings, but Lance locked his gaze onto his own opponent only a moment later. By then, she was fully upright and once again operational. Her knuckles were wrapped around her sword mightily, tightly—so tight they trembled with fury—and she surged forward with aggression equal to Keith’s. 

Her sword came swiftly down, glinting like a flash of lightning, but sounding with a pitchy whistle instead of a blast of thunder. It hissed beside Lance’s ear as he sidestepped around its aim at his skull. Her attack crashed recklessly into the dirt with a harsher, deeper, more world shaking sound, the sound of thunder it ought to have been paired with from the start. Zethrid coughed at the dirt she’d knocked up, but remained undeterred. Her blade rose a few feet again, cutting through the air sideways and nicking the waist of Lance’s leather armor as he failed to react as quickly as he should have. He whipped up a retaliatory spell in his functional palm and flung it at her throat. He had to buy himself time—distance—because he couldn’t win with spells she could recover from so easily. Small, trinket electricity spells wouldn’t work with her, he realized, as she shook his latest attack off with merely a growl and a hard jerk of her head in either direction. She was lurching towards him in an instant, longer strides gaining on him impossibly fast. 

He shoved his good hand behind his back as a new strategy sparked inside his brain. Doing his best to maintain his hasty dodging, he began to charge a particularly potent spell in the palm he’d hidden. If he could stall Zethrid maybe two minutes, if he could keep his enemy unaware of his growing attack for no more than three, he could blast her with it, and it would undoubtedly be enough to knock her out. The problem would be keeping her eyes off the hand he’d poorly concealed. To anyone who wasn’t acting as rashly and recklessly as his current opponent, Lance’s plan would have been entirely apparent. A level-headed person, unburdened by the impatience of anger, would easily see through his simple strategy. So, the best way to be sure she didn’t figure him out and impede his plan was to keep her as infuriated as she was. And, boy, Lance had always been good at riling people up.

He began to clear his mind—pestering was something he couldn’t do with anxiety in his lungs and his fingertips. Lance breathed out his nose as he stepped out of the way of another unbalanced heave of her blade; it locked into place a few inches deep due to her sloppiness. As Zethrid hunched her spine and her fingers quaked in an equally haphazard attempt to free her blade, Lance placed the sole of his boot atop the blade she was trying to wriggle loose. Her head whipped up, eyes fogged with an infuriated smoke, as though there’d been a fire in her gut and the steam had risen to make her line of sight waver and smudge. She grunted and gave a harsher tug to her weapon, but Lance didn’t fall away. In fact, he slammed his foot farther up the desired object with a grin. He leaned forward so his nose was closer to hers. “Hey there,” he said, squinting his eyes in a way that would have been deftly perceived as a false smile by anyone who, to reiterate, was not blinded by their rage. Gods, though, it made his enemy’s rage even more apparent; the air was hot and putrid with the humid, furious pants she was heaving every time Lance did something irksome. His foe yanked the hilt again and Lance was finally knocked off the weapon, but he made sure to giggle as he stumbled away. He had to play the role of a menace to keep her worked up. A minute or two, that was how little time he had to skirt by like this. Angering her could be disastrous, if she managed to land one of those fury-filled strikes, but it was the fastest way.  

“Dammit!” Zethrid charged, feet pounding and kicking dust, at Lance. “They said this was going to be easy!” A horizontal slash was heaved at Lance’s chest, one way, then it spun quickly with a flick of her wrist to go the other. Lance swayed out of the range of both strikes, finding fluidity in the familiarity of mocking his opponent, as he’d often done while sparring with Keith over the past six months. But he couldn’t dodge it all. The woman slammed a foot forward in a heavy step each time she swung. The ground shook each time she stepped. Lance’s ankles toddered each time the ground shook. He’d yet to find a way to keep his knees from buckling with her every swing. And she was making remarkable progress in catching up to him, too. She was too large, too broad, too hefty to be moving as quickly as she was, but she was certainly moving that quickly. It was making Lance’s heart move too quickly, too. The tremble in his limbs didn’t deter him in the slightest, however, and he dodged yet another jab of Zethrid’s sword with ease. “You’re such a pest!”

His teeth gleamed in a smile and he crinkled the fingers of his good hand behind his back, prodding the spell he was forming. He was almost halfway to a spell that would knock  _ anyone _ out, even a hulking woman like the one chasing after him. “You’re just mad that I’m better at this than you,” he said. Zethrid growled once more, but there was a screech from the other half of the battlefield and the woman’s attention was yanked harshly towards it. She abandoned her pursuit of Lance instantly, body swiveling to check on her companion, who Lance could see had suffered a cut to her waist. Zethrid howled the other woman’s name, nearly leaving her fight behind and certainly leaving her backside unguarded. Lance gave a solid kick to the hole in armor along the crook of her knee. Her legs buckled as Lance snapped a warning. “Eyes on me!” That proved successful in pissing her further off and she whipped back around with another huff. “You care about your partner an awful lot, huh? It’s a weakness, you should really be focusing on your opponent.” An enraged grunt dribbled like syrup past her lips. A smug laugh from Lance was all it took to have her chucking her sword to the side and lunging forward with her hands instead; she did as Lance had told her. Much to the mage’s regret. Her fingers found purchase around Lance’s neck, as the mage was too stricken by her change in tactics to get out of the way. “Guh,” he gasped, very nearly losing focus on his charging spell and very nearly bringing his plan to his enemy’s attention as he almost grappled for freedom around his throat by instinct. “Wait.” It came out as a hiss, all the confidence having faded with the air he’d suddenly lost in his lungs. 

“No! I’m sick of hearing you yack,” Zethrid growled, forcing her hands to wrap tighter around Lance’s windpipe until he couldn’t keep his hands still anymore. His bad hand, wading through the excruciating pain shooting up his veins, began to claw at her iron grip with all the speed he could manage. By sheer will and a fogged sense of focus, he kept enough wits about him to continue hiding the other hand and the spell it held. “If we didn’t need you alive, I’d shut you up for good.” Accentuating her claim, she tightened her hold. Molten lead and steam burned the rims of Lance’s eyes as tears started to collect. His legs began to kick uselessly at the air. The very same air he could not, despite all his trying and wheezing, get into his lungs. Resisting every urge to pull his valuable hand out from behind him, he conjured a spell along his broken arm. It crackled up his inner wrist until it latched onto Zethrid. It shocked her enough to force her fingers to unfurl. Her unwillingness was expressed in the exasperated cry she released as Lance fell to his knees.

Though he was catching on the air he attempted to gulp down, he leapt up from being collapsed as speedily as he could. Good thing, too, since Zethrid narrowly missed him with a swing of her sword when he rocked back into a standing position. His throat felt as though it were scalded, however, and thus Lance found himself without the ability to taunt. And his arm, the fractured one, was throbbing so atrociously he felt about ready to heave everything he’d eaten for breakfast into the dust between his feet. But he didn’t have time. The world was rocking and spinning around him, but he didn’t have time for that, either. His chest ached and his lungs remained strangled for oxygen. But, as he realized his spell had grown enough to succeed, he simultaneously realized he didn’t have time to dwell on his breathing, either. The most opportune time to attack was upon him, as Zethrid turned her gaze away for a millisecond and bent down to retrieve her sword from where she’d thrown it earlier. Feigning a grin that looked far smugger than he truly felt, Lance went on the offensive.

Across the battlefield, however, his sneak attack had not gone as unnoticed as it had by Zethrid. No, a handful of meters away, his other opponent stood, frozen to the smoldering dust littering the ground, with wide, observant eyes. Keith watched her with equally attuned eyes, squinted and locked upon the fright he plucked out of her dazed expression. He absentmindedly pulled back his attacks, having feared the worst in the reasoning of her look—he feared something dire had happened to Lance. So, he turned his attention to where hers was locked. By the time he’d pieced together what had her as terrified as her wide eyes portrayed her, Ezor had shoved past him. He didn’t get a chance to reach a hand out to stop her, or a chance to stick a foot out to trip her, before she was darting towards Lance. “Get back here,” he strained, sprinting behind her with little success. His fingers were outstretched in front of him, reaching uselessly for her wrist as he failed to keep up with all the added weight of his armor slowing him down. Realizing the futility of his attempt to catch Ezor, he shouted, “Lance, watch out!” 

The brunet had been pulling his hand out from behind him, seconds from letting his charged spell roll off his fingertips, when he heard his husband shout cautionary words. Lance’s attention was torn from his target, forced instead onto Ezor charging at him and Keith chasing behind her. Unfortunately, his redirected focus wasn’t enough to halt the newly arisen problem. Ezor had a collection of dark magic in her palm, brewing and bubbling, and Lance watched, too slow to react, as she launched it his way. He tugged most of his body out of the way of the baseball sized attack, but his hand, the one holding his recently completed spell, couldn’t escape. The splatter of dark magic against his wrist made the electricity in his palm fizz out. His weapon was gone. As was his opportunity, a fact he realized when Zethrid finished gathering her sword and began to sprint towards him. The opening, his plan, all turned to ashes. And so easily, too.

Cussing, Lance struggled to escape Zethrid’s renewed vigor, but there was a burn in his side that hadn’t been there before. His good hand went to prod it; his fingers came back with blood. He hissed, realizing even a dark magic spell as small as the one that had crashed into his hand was enough to do its job. He was certain that, across the battlefield, Ezor was one injury shorter than she had been before. He’d suffered the blows his husband had undoubtedly worked hard to land. And damn was it slowing him down. In fact, Zethrid caught up to him mere moments after he found his newest injury. She bashed the hilt of her blade against Lance’s temple, her free hand having come to grip his shoulder, so she could hold him in place. Her blow didn’t land nearly hard enough, though, as when the dull end of her blade pulled away, Lance remained mostly conscious, despite the swell of a fresh bruise and the throb of a headache. She aimed to knock his skull around more, but as she raised her hand and as Lance began to writhe to free himself, there was another collection of shouts across the battlefield.

Zethrid turned first. Lance’s line of sight followed hers, movements groggy and vision blurry. Still unable to free his good hand of Zethrid’s hold on his upper arm, he was forced to squint through the trail of blood, from his most recent bashing, that was dripping into his eyes, as he was unable to wipe his vision clean. He bat back the sting of warm liquid in his eyes to see what was going on. He saw his husband—the vague, armored outline of him—wrestling to free something from Ezor’s grip. The knight was shouting and reaching his hands out finding no purchase on whatever he was trying to take. His opponent was screeching, too, snapping for Keith to back off, and swaying around each surge of his frantic hands. The tiff was over swiftly, faster than Lance could completely comprehend, and it was Ezor who won the struggle in the end. She had scrambled a couple feet away from Keith and kept the object they were fighting over firmly between her thumb and forefinger. Lance squinted to try and figure out what the object was, tugged at the restraint over his arm when he still couldn’t make it out through his blood, and yelped when his yank only made Zethrid grip him more tightly. In fact, she dropped her sword to wrap both sets of fingers around his shoulders. Then she shoved him harshly between herself and Ezor, entirely undeterred by Lance’s squirming and struggling.

It took a couple of jaw-clacking, teeth-bared milliseconds before Lance surrendered his freedom to the strong palms grasping him in place. A few more fractions of a moment and he’d stilled enough to determine what his opponent had fought with Keith over. A cylinder of wood, a hollowed tube of it, with a purpose Lance remained unable to discern. But as Ezor pulled something needlelike from a previously unnoticed pouch on her side and loaded it into the tube, Lance froze. A realization clutched his chest. Every one of his organs stuttered into silence and motionlessness. His mouth got dry, seized by the feeling of hope vanishing, until eventually, by a complete lack of hope. He felt shots of tingles run up his arms and tie knots around his throat. He felt swarms of imaginary needles—though inspired by the very real one ahead of him—sink into his skin like the jaws of a predator. Down in his fingertips he began to shake, a tremor that slid its treacherous hands all the way through his body, until his everything was quaking. Because that needle (he’d determined it was as much with certainty by then)... he knew what it was.

A dart.

It was a dart.

Lance was, by no means, an expert in darts and he was surely equally unknowledgeable in whatever poison was likely lacing that particular dart. That said, he knew it certainly wouldn’t hail anything to his favor and he was definitely a smart enough man to know it was his cue to get  _ out of the way. _

Fret laced each twist of his waist and each cry for help from Keith as he tried to wriggle himself free of Zethrid’s merciless hold. Keith stopped his pursuit of Ezor for a second when he heard his name, looking to Lance with utter pity and his eyes and unadulterated fear on his lips. He mouthed Lance’s name in response to the commotion, before he chased Ezor with renewed vigor. It remained insufficient, however, and Ezor brought the weapon to her lips while Keith remained too far—closer to Lance and Zethrid than to Ezor—to stop her. Lance screamed. He found himself excessively terror-stricken, to the point of finding himself hitting a wall when he thought to prepare another spell to perhaps get free. And as Ezor sucked in a breath to launch her weapon, Lance followed suit. His inhalation was trembling. The air was tangled with a fear that it might be his last intake of oxygen. Sure, his enemies told him they needed him alive, but what did that really mean? For how long did they need him alive? Maybe only until that poison entered his bloodstream. Perhaps that was all they ever needed him alive for. 

Ezor’s chest remained puffed, air locked in her lungs and waiting to be released, for far too many slams of Lance’s heart against his ribcage. Lance’s chest felt like his was stuffed full. His breathing was shaky and his heart was beating shallowly, like if it thumped too loudly, it would hit the walls of his chest cavity and burst. As he watched his enemy hold her breath like a warrior would hold a sword, his lungs remained unable to effectively function. He watched as Ezor’s lengthy, spider-like fingers shifted along the tube for a better grip, creeping along the rounded edges until they were balanced and ready to strike. At that, his heart burned like rubbing alcohol in a paper cut. It swelled into a gulping wildfire that began to swallow all of him into a state of numbness. It started to stutter violently, loudly, recklessly, in his ribcage, as though it had long since stopped caring about bumping into something and popping. Its restraint had been painful before, but the overexertion and panicked thrumming it had become was utter turmoil. 

Scathed by his palpable anxiety, Lance watched helplessly as his enemy blinked her eyes, slowly and steadily, and then, right as she was starting to expel her breath, he watched, just as helplessly, as everything fell to pieces. Her shoulders had shifted, her chest had fallen back into position; he’d seen as much, so he knew she’d launched the dart. But Lance hadn’t seen the dart. A puff of dust had scattered itself between him and his enemy at the precise moment of the strike; he couldn’t see Ezor or her hollowed piece of wood. As he thought, however, he realized there had been no prick of a needle anywhere on him to accompany the flight of the dart, there had been no warm trickle of blood from a wound, and he hadn’t—still didn’t—feel any drowsy or sickening or painful effects of poison. Lance remained infinitely confused. Had he been wrong? Had it not been a dart at all? 

Struggling to piece together why he wasn’t reacting to a dart, why there didn’t seem to be a dart at all, he squinted his eyes and craned his neck to see through the dust. As it began to settle, he batted it off the ends of his lashes and licked it off the cracks in his lips. Slow as the drip of hot sweat Lance felt trickling down the nape of his neck, the dust drifted back to the ground. The moment it did, Lance easily spotted why the dust had risen in the first place. And so did the entire battlefield. 

Upon seeing the cause, nothing was said. They’d all seen it, but none said a word. They were shaken. Down to Lance’s curling toes and his numbing fingertips, Lance was shaken. Up at the tips of his ears and in the cavern of his chest, he was shaken. In his stomach and in his throat, he was shaken. And he wasn’t the only one. Zethrid had been so shaken, she’d lost her grip on Lance’s shoulders. It slipped, her hands bunched into fists, and then they fell and slapped against her armored thighs limply. Even so, Lance didn’t make an effort to step away from her; he was as frozen as his enemies were.

“Ezor, you dumbass!” Zethrid hollered and Lance felt it in his knees, like the ground shook in response, in fear of her words. Broad fingers locked into position around Lance’s shoulder again, but they merely shoved him to the side as the woman jogged around him. Rather, she attempted to jog around him, because while Lance wavered under her push, he quickly was able to correct himself and he sprinted even faster to Ezor. “You hit the wrong one!” It seemed every one of them had temporarily forgotten the battle at hand; they’d all failed too greatly—each at their own individualized missions and goals—to muster any semblance of aggression in their veins. Lance wouldn’t have been able to raise a fist if his life depended on it. Evidently, because his life was hinging precariously on his victory in this battle, and he couldn’t have asked for a better opening to attack, yet he remained unable to spark a fight within himself.

His heart caught fire in his chest, swelling with unspilled tears because it seemed that earlier, in a moment of recklessness, Keith had burst forward. He’d darted around Ezor’s frame and he’d dug his heels into the ground between the trajectory of the dart and Lance’s meek body across the battlefield. And he’d kicked up such a large quantity of dust beforehand that no one noticed what he’d done until the dirt settled and they all saw his crumpled, bruised, dart-pierced body scattered over the desert floor in a tangle of scratched armor and diced flesh. Lance found himself collapsing, too, when he reached the spot his husband had fallen upon.

He slipped his hand forward to cup the back of Keith’s neck—to card through the stray loops of his ponytail there, to pull him closer, to savor the skin there that remained flushed with blood, in case it wouldn’t be so for long—and he clung despairingly to his husband. Though his throat was wet and humid with tears he was barely keeping packed down, he did his best to speak. “What did you do?” His voice shook and his hands grappled for more flesh to hold, to latch onto, to remember the warmth. He found the dart with his weak fingers. Plucking it out of Keith’s bicep with deep seated, violent vengeance, he lifted his chin to stare at his arguing opponents. “What did you cover this with?” No one turned to him, no one said a word to him. No answers. 

His enemies were bickering and blaming, “Ezor, what the hell are we supposed to do now? Our orders were to come back with the knight in perfect condition! If the venom gets too far into his bloodstream, he’ll die before we get back! Then what will we do?!” Ezor looked incredibly guilty and equally frightened. Not by the harsh stance and violent tone her partner was using, though, surprisingly enough. No, the fear was in her eyes only when she stared at her own hands. She stared at the wooden weapon in her palms with such disdain, such terror, such a longing to run away etched into her angled features. “Ezor!” The woman looked up finally and she dropped her weapon. Her hands instantly wiped on her pants, as though she was so disgusted with the object she’d dropped that she couldn’t even bear to hold residue of it on her flesh.

“What are we supposed to do,” she breathed, more of a statement than anything else. “Zethrid, I don’t have the antivenom. We just killed the target we needed alive. Oh, Gods.” Lance clutched Keith’s nape with more vigor, in search of even a faint pulse. Killed? No, no, Keith was still alive under his fingertips. There was no way he’d died that quickly. Surely, no venom in existence was that efficient. Everyone was panicking. “The knight’s as good as dead—if we go back—you know that, that,  _ he’ll _ kill us.” Lance rolled his husband on his side, disregarding the conversation for a moment to assess the damage. He ripped the fabric hiding the wound, hoping to find, by some miracle, no wound at all. His hope wasn’t fulfilled. A palm-sized splotch of snowy, moldy white swept over a patch of Keith’s skin, parts dyed red by a small trickle of blood from where the needle had struck. Lance’s fingers prodded the spot on the knight’s arm, and Keith stirred with a groan, but ultimately stayed unconscious. With an audible sob, Lance ducked his head in surrender. Not to his opponents, but to his circumstances. He gave up, he gave up. Whoever wanted his soul could have it, just  _ please, _ don’t take Keith. Not while his husband had taken the shot for  _ him. _

The knight’s skin was flushed. Some of it was the cling of battle to his cheeks and the prod of desert sun on the sides of his neck. But most of it was pain. There was sweat on his brow from before he was shot, but there was just as much, and more, from after. Hiding in his Cupid’s Bow, poking out from between tangled patches of his hair, soaked into the hair tie at the back of his head. His lips were parted and cracked, wrinkled into a faint scowl in a pained grimace. And it was excruciating to see. Because that wasn’t supposed to be Keith’s face, it was meant to be Lance’s. The brunet curled forward, brushing his sweaty forehead and hairline along Keith’s. He panted against Keith’s dry lips, begging him wordlessly to jump up, to be fine again. Because it was supposed to be  _ him. _

When he rejoined the conversation, Zethrid was comforting her partner, reminding her they were in it together, and telling her they’d find a way out of their punishments for failure. Her reassurance was made up of profoundly moving words and gingerly placed palms on shoulders, but Lance found it made him sick to his stomach to see and hear. Jealousy gnawed at his heart. He was bitter that his enemies were, with every ounce of Keith’s blood the venom infected, ripping his husband from him, yet the two of them remained together and complacent. Lance carved their softening faces and gentle voices into the inside of his skull, dug into a part of his brain he marked as  _ disdain.  _ Biting crescents into his lower lip, he resisted his impulse to scoop Keith’s sword from where it had landed in the dirt. Denied his impulse to run it through his enemies while they were distracted, because he needed them alive if he wanted to find antivenom. And stomped out his impulse to run it through his own gut—to ease himself of the pain of having to watch Keith drip away from him like water through a colander—because killing himself would help no one and nothing, except the wad of guilt at the top of his throat. Growling, he batted his impulses down.

“I asked you what the hell you put in this!” The two finally turned to him. His skin turned noticeably bleached when he pinched the dull sides of the dart between the fingers of his free hand (the hand he’d almost forgotten belonged to a broken arm, which was fair, given the emotional strife of seeing his husband on the verge of death). “Tell me, dammit! You need him alive, too, don’t you?” His voice had begun as loud as the rushing water of that rapid river the day before; it surged as strongly as pounding, stormy rain on an old roof. But it morphed into something meek and soggy as he continued his plea for an answer. His tongue was swollen with tears that had slipped down his cheeks and trickled into his mouth; he could taste the dirt those teardrops had picked up, but he couldn’t have possibly cared. “Please,” he begged. With his fingers wrapped around the dart and Keith’s neck, he couldn’t wipe the water on his swollen lips and he hung his head to let the droplets trail off. “Please.”

Ezor was the first to respond. Guilt was in her eyes as her mouth fell open to speak, and one of her hands twitched towards him apologetically. Zethrid’s response came not long after, though, and hers came without the compassion, guilt, and empathy. It was dealt with a heaving dose of violence. She moved forward with leaden steps and she drew her blade with an aggression worth rivaling those pounding footfalls. Growling, she raised the hilt of her weapon to resume bashing Lance in his temple, as she’d been doing prior to the dart being drawn. But, as an explanation for her aggression and before the weapon collided—because it was an indisputable fact that it would have collided; Lance wasn’t going to risk letting Keith go to dodge—she shouted, “We’re leaving  _ now!”  _

The other woman began to make a fuss behind her at that, however. “Zethrid, we can’t!” Armor rattled as Zethrid swiveled her torso to face her arguing companion. She swung her blade wide, a literal motion of brushing her off, in an exaggerated gesture of silencing Ezor. “If we go back,  _ he’ll _ know we failed—” Zethrid spun fully, an argument on her lips and bubbling over like a pot left too long on the stove, but her shouting was a dull splatter on Lance’s eardrums as his focus landed elsewhere. The conversation had muted again for Lance. 

He glanced at Keith, the sweaty flush and flaring sunburn on his cheeks, and he moved one hand from atop the wound in Keith’s arm to those patches of cherry flesh. Observing Keith’s face closely, too focused to be disturbed by his opponents’ bickering, Lance could see the tremble of his husband’s lips as he breathed shakily out through his mouth. He counted maybe three breaths as he contemplated. Under no circumstances could he go with his enemies. Even with the possibility of finding an antivenom where they’d come from, it wasn’t worth the risk. There were healers in his village, if he turned back, he could likely find Keith help there. The question became how to get away from his enemies. It took a few seconds of thoughts clacking along the inside of his skull, buzzing and blending with the banter of his foes, until a solution latched onto his brain. 

Blinking at Keith, he gingerly slipped the hand of his broken arm out from under the knight’s neck. Keith’s head lolled to the side and his ponytail took to the dirt like a dry paintbrush would, when the support of Lance’s palm disappeared. Then, Lance stood, moved the dart to his bad hand, slapped his painless arm over the backs of his thighs to smack the dirt off, and tore his gaze from his husband. The dart was gathered between the fingers of his good hand shortly after. His body swished side to side, face a sort of blank expression he could feel on his lips and eyelids without seeing. One leg swung up, over Keith’s torso, and he approached his enemies at a leisurely pace for a moment, before he bumped his speed up. He stretched his arm out, the dart went with it, and he jabbed it towards Zethrid. Ezor warned her of the attack on her backside only a moment before it was too late. The broader woman swayed away in time to dodge the needle aimed at a break in her armor on her lower back. 

Not the least bit discouraged, Lance went again, jerking the needle at a different opening in her armor, on the woman’s stomach, when she turned to him. Her ankles wobbled less the second time she dodged, but her face worsened, contorting in question. “What do you think that’s gonna do? Poke me to death?” She chuckled to herself, the sound bringing her face back to a normal expression. Despite her words, however, she continued to step out of the way of the needle each time Lance swung it at her. Lance changed strategies. Not so much because his attacks were missing—hitting them wasn’t his current goal—but rather because he could get the duo to react more if he made them panic; they’d be more responsive if they were protecting each other. His change in strategy was a jab angled at Ezor. She dodged, taking a leap back to do so. “Ezor!” Zethrid growled and lunged at Lance, stumbling farther again when Lance aimed the dart back at her and Ezor shouted. Licking his lips, the brunet grinned. 

He needed distance. Needed steps between them and his husband, or he’d have no chance at winning this. And they were giving him every yard he needed, bit by bit, dodge by dodge, frustrated huff by frustrated huff. He hadn’t decided what he’d do when he got the distance he needed, but he pondered it between each attack. Between the next pair of swings, however, a cry from his foe wedged its way into his thinking space, halting his strategizing.

“Don’t let it touch you!” Zethrid looked up from Lance to stare at her partner; Lance used the lapse in guard to strike again. Three quick stabs were thrown meticulously her way, targeting different openings in her armor, but all were dodged and stepped away from. He swung a fist her way, throwing her off her slippery, evasive rhythm. The next movement of the dart came much closer to breaking skin, slicing air no more than an inch from Zethrid’s skin. “I put enough venom on there to kill anything, even those beasts that are supposedly extinct in the desert, just to be safe. There’s probably still residue on there, so don’t—” Lance flicked his wrist and cut through a portion of Zethrid’s shirt. There was a sound of splitting fabric, but the cut remained barely short of pricking skin. Ezor couldn’t have known that, though, and she’d screeched. “Oh, Gods, did it—”

“No! Shut up, you’re making me lose my focus, dammit!” The brunet spared a glance at his fallen husband as Zethrid answered, counting the newly gained meters between the knight and their enemies. A safe amount. At the very least, any attack aimed at Lance wouldn’t be able to miss and land on Keith instead. But now the burden of a poorly conceived plan weighed on his shoulders, and he wasn’t sure where to go next with his strategy. Teleportation wasn’t an option; Keith couldn’t get himself through a portal as he was, since he couldn’t tap into any magical prowess while unconscious. Lance didn’t have the benefit of time or distraction to charge another electric attack. He doubted he could successfully land the dart he was swinging about. Even if he switched targets unexpectedly again, he still wouldn’t be able to catch them off guard enough to take either of them down.

During his consideration, his strikes had slowed, bogged down by distraction. Zethrid seized the opportunity to take a swing of her own blade, landing a thin slice on Lance’s outstretched arm the next time he struck. He hissed and tottered backwards, but surged forward with his dart immediately after; he couldn’t afford to lose the distance he’d created. The battle remained a stalemate, a tug of war, as he and Zethrid exchanged missing blows and as Lance gained and lost meters from Keith. A few minutes passed of the duo clashing too close to each other for Ezor to intervene with a spell, lest she run the risk of injuring her teammate. Maybe a close call or two, but ultimately no advantage was gained on either side, and anxiety stumbled its way up Lance’s spine in response. 

It snatched his throat as he remembered he didn’t know how long Keith had before the venom struck too deep and its effects were irreversible. It rubbed the rings of his eyes until they were raw and on the brink of crying as he remembered he didn’t have an antivenom on hand, that he had to make it all the way back to his village to find one. It flicked the insides of his eardrums with every heartbeat, until all he could hear was his own pulse and ringing as he remembered that, even then, there was no guarantee he’d find an antivenom. The recollections were unbearable, pushing him to the brink of surrender in a millisecond. Perhaps going with his enemies was an option. It would be faster, not to mention that at their base they had an antivenom, and that made surrender the closest thing to certainty he had. Perhaps he could…

There was the faint sound of a rumble a couple hundred yards away. Small, insignificant, unworthy of so much as a glance in its direction, but he registered it in his head. Zethrid’s eyes flicked sideways as she felt it, too. Skittering on weak ankles, Lance shoved his dart forward at the momentary opening, but she raised her blade and the dart skirted the edge of it with jerky motions. A crash came again, a little closer this time, and Lance elected to pay it no mind, as he’d done before. More sounds came in rapid succession, however, and when he felt a wave of heat hit his cheek, he whipped his head around. He stared. From his peripheral, he saw Zethrid staring the same way, shaken and terrified. Every one of his joints locked in panic.

It was a line of explosions, one right after the other, each closer than the last, and finally having gained enough proximity to the fighting to trace both parties’ facial features with overwhelming heat. Flashes of simmering red and deep, scarring orange, with bases that sparked purple, telling Lance that the explosions were founded upon magic. His eyes blurred from the overwhelming light and watered at the smoky heat. The smoke hadn’t caught enough wing to reach him yet, but looking at it puff up as each flash of light died had his nose burning and his eyes stinging. He couldn’t turn away, though. No, he couldn’t even think to move.

Zethrid was urged to motion first, and the one of her hands unoccupied by a sword flew out, stuttering to grasp Lance’s wrist. He screeched and managed to wrench it back out of her hold. She tried to snatch the dart itself next, once again missing. Another attempt and failure came, on account of Lance jutting the object towards her when Zethrid gave it another go. “Gimme that!” Her words were hisses and they were interrupted by nervous glances at the hastily approaching flashes of heat. She got ahold of his wrist again. Lance tugged, refusing to give up his most effective weapon—it was his only shot at winning; he couldn’t afford to lose it. Yet the explosions got closer and he decided he’d rather lose just the weapon than both the weapon and his life. No one would get Keith to help if he died. 

His ears were ringing, his wrist was burning with the exertion of holding itself together as Zethrid tried to rip it off entirely. Needles of dread were digging around in his gut, making the back of his tongue pulsate with the need to retch his nerves up. He needed to let go. But his nerves were glue on his fingertips, a knowledge that the moment he let go, Zethrid would sprint away from the explosions, too. And his enemies would survive. They’d have the dart and their lives and all of the advantage. He couldn’t afford to let go. But he had to.

Dammit!

He waited until the last possible moment he was confident he could scramble out of the way of the approaching explosions, and then he booked it. Lance turned on his heel and ran. Zethrid was allowed the dart, but Lance knew how tug of war games worked. She grunted as all her force began to work too well, and Lance knew she’d hit the ground by the panicked shout of her name by Ezor, even without turning around. The rumble of explosions didn’t slow and guilt settled in Lance’s gut as he knew he’d subjected Zethrid to an inescapable situation. A fleeting thought of how his enemies were merely following orders rattled around in his skull before his brain jostled instead, as the hot air of the explosion caught on his back and launched him forward. Pain swarmed his thoughts when he landed on the ground and his cheek split open from stones that wormed their way into his skin. 

There were a few moments where he couldn’t think. His brain shut off. White noise was in the cavity between his ears. And then he noticed his ears. They were screeching something worse than the panicked ringing they’d been earlier and it woke his thoughts up. He groaned. His head pounded. A concussion, probably. Or maybe not. Gods, he didn’t know what a concussion felt like. And his face burned. So did the back of his neck. A hand went blindly to his nape, dizzied brain focused on the curiosity over whether his hair had been singed off in the heat. His fingers grappled at something thicker than flesh. It was matted and sticky with blood, but his hair was still there. 

Gods, that wasn’t what mattered. He needed to snap out of it.

His ears slowly stopped shrieking.

The moment he got his bearings, he forced his working arm under his torso to push himself up enough to sit. He spotted Keith first when his head lifted. Luckily, the man was still a handful of meters away, too far to have been injured by the blast. A sputtered, but relieved, sigh skidded past his lips. Next, Lance brought his good wrist to his cheek in order to swipe at the blood and to brush off the stones clinging to it. As he did, his eyes stuttered to where Zethrid had been before the blast, sympathy tugging illogically at his heart. The ground was still smoking, a ring of long, vertical, grey clouds streaking up around a hole in the dirt. It seemed the explosions’ target had been his enemies, because the blasts had traced a circle around them and sent their side of the battlefield underground. After he’d blearily patted around his spine in search of his supplies, Lance finally looked to the spot the first explosion had gone off. It was a feeble attempt at spotting who had started the chain, but he came out of his sweep of the horizon empty handed. 

Lance shoved himself the rest of the way up until he was balanced on the balls of his feet and on wobbling knees. He waddled forward, weakly approaching the cavern in the ground. His brain scrambled to prepare his gut for mangled bodies, for the sickness that would come with knowing it was  _ his _ fault, but he knew it would ultimately be useless. The moment he saw blood, he was certain he’d be delirious with guilt. Hadn’t Ezor said from the start it wasn’t personal? Hadn’t she been terrified someone would kill her when she went home without fulfilling her mission? She hadn’t wanted to kill anyone, had she? Yet, in the end, he’d only done what needed to be done. Lance had needed to finish his enemies. There hadn’t been another way. He wouldn’t have had any chance of making it out of there with Keith if his enemies were still alive to thwart his efforts. 

But that didn’t make it any easier. No, it didn’t make it an ounce easier. It didn’t ease any of the throb in his stomach or any of the pricking under his eyes. It didn’t stop his ankles from crumpling as he thought about it all. It didn’t keep him from being unable to block out the unsteady clamor of his heartbeat. She was just fighting for her life, she and Zethrid both had been, and Lance knew, when he got to the edge of the standable ground, he’d look down and find that he’d killed them anyway.

But as he truly did reach the spot, he supposed he shouldn’t have “known” anything of the sort. 

Because he was wrong. 

There  _ were _ two bodies in the pit, but they were most definitely alive. And one of them was shouting. 

“Zethrid!” Ezor had clambered over to her partner. The wider woman was lying on her back, starfish on the ground, and she broke the sprawled position only to lift her palm warily in front of her face. Her eyes were lidded and worried as she examined it. “Zethrid, the dart…” There was a crack in Ezor’s voice as she kneeled and pulled the observed hand into her lap. Lance squinted to get a better look at why that hand was so much of the focus for the two women. He caught a glint of sunlight as Ezor moved it and spun it about to examine, and he winced as he understood the meaning. When he’d let go of the dart before, Zethrid had still held it in her own hand. So, when she fell it must have wedged itself into the fabric over her palm. Venom and all. Voice cracking worse than the earth had before, Ezor said, “we have to go back—”

“I’m fine! You know we can’t go back!” Zethrid stood up, immediately keeling to one side as her knees gave out. With a struggling, trembling grip, Ezor caught her companion against her chest and kept her upright. Even from the vertical distance Lance was at, he could easily see how weakly, nervously, her wrists quaked under Zethrid’s weight. “Not until we have those two. We can’t go back, Ezor.” Looking up at her partner, Zethrid couldn’t mask the terror in her eyes. “Or else—” When she turned her gaze up, she also caught a glimpse of Lance, kneeling on the ground with white knuckles around the cliff face. Her expression went impossibly sour. Ezor noticed, too, because she looked up afterwards. Lance didn’t move. 

The three had a stare down for a few seconds, before Zethrid’s eyes slipped shut and Ezor’s wrists flopped at the added weight of her companion’s unconsciousness. Lance watched her shoulders start to jitter and jerk with panicked breaths. Her head whipped about, scanning the walls of the crater for a path up and out. She rolled Zethrid off her lap, where the woman had landed, to get a better look around. The brunet on the edge heard her sputter and begin to blubber as she did, found himself frozen still at the familiarity of it. If he were in that situation with Keith, he’d probably be doing worse. 

Guilt made Lance shift from grasping the edge of the cliff to fiddling with his dusty backpack straps as he watched. Part of him wanted to help—the pit of his stomach was swelling and aching with the need of it—but it was disadvantageous, and he knew it. Still, his guilt outweighed his logic and he was looking for a way to help before he even finished sucking another breath in. The crater wasn’t too deep; he could help. If he lent a hand, he could do it. It was only barely deep enough that, without help from another person, no one would be tall enough to reach the top. About a Zethrid and a half in height. 

Lance bit his tongue for a moment. If he had Ezor hoist Zethrid up most of the way, he might be able to haul the woman up. If she removed Zethrid’s armor first, he certainly could; he had such a quantity of excess adrenaline rushing up and down his spine, he doubted it would be an issue at all. And then Ezor looked light enough to tug out as she was. But his broken arm had to be considered. Could he do it all with only one arm?

Clearing his throat, he bottled his nerves and stuffed them aside. “Hey.” The woman scuttling around the crater hastily lifted her eyes. Her hands trembled, but cradled a spell in their palms nonetheless. “I can lift you out,” he said, voice hushing itself without his consent, as if his subconscious was warning him against the idea of assisting. “Take off your partner’s chestplate and leg armor, get her enough over your shoulders that I can grab her, and I can probably tug her out.” Ezor was frozen in his stare and her magic swelled between her fingertips. “Look, I have nothing to gain from killing you at this point. You’re just as dead if I do nothing.” He shuffled himself onto his knees, wrestled his bag off his shoulders with his best attempt at keeping from agitating his injuries, and dipped his good arm over the ledge. “C’mon, I don’t wanna see you die.” He felt his eyes begin to water and he tugged his arm back up to wipe at the underside of his nose. Lance knew he was wasting time, but she was scared. So, so scared. She looked small and trapped, and he could see her shaking like a bird who’d gotten herself tangled in the branches of a thorny tree; she looked pathetic, like a child, maybe like his own niece. And he couldn’t turn and leave her after the thought of her helplessness. “C’mon, dammit!”

Her eyes flashed and her lids batted once, before she was scrambling to do as he’d asked. After she’d peeled the armor off and piled it into a sloppy heap in the middle of the ditch, she bolted over, with Zethrid dragging behind. Heaving her partner onto her back, she managed to gain enough height that Lance could grab Zethrid’s arm and tug it up to get ahold of her wrist. “You can only use one arm,” Ezor observed, shuffling her grip. “She’s too heavy, you can’t…” the hopelessness waded into her watery eyes again.

Gritting his teeth and huffing with exertion, Lance nudged his broken arm over the ledge. “If you use your dark magic, you can heal it.” She got a skeptical look on her face; the ridges of her brows tugged together and her lips pulled back as her nose wrinkled. It was impossible not to notice the trepidation seeping from her features and soaking in every one of her heaving breaths as she struggled to keep her partner high enough for Lance to reach. “Please, I swear, I just want to help you. Don’t make me leave here feeling guilty. Please,” he tried to refrain from wheezing at the last word, but hanging his broken arm over the edge was taking its toll on his will to keep his composure. Ezor caught his wheeze and her skepticism fled her face, as though one instance in which she could witness Lance’s pain was all it took to convince her of his sincerity. He wouldn’t put himself through so much agony if he didn’t mean it. 

One of her hands swarmed with smoke and raised to clap against Lance’s broken arm. It ached for a millisecond, burned with the sting of jostled shattered bones that made Lance’s eyes sting the same way, then the pain vanished as Ezor switched the fractures onto her own limb. Reacting quickly, Lance wasted no time before he grasped Zethrid’s other bicep with his healed hand. He slipped his hand along it to find a stronger purchase against her wrist. Shifting his weight, Lance shuffled his feet and dug his heels into the ground. Once he’d found his stability, he used the last of his adrenaline-induced strength to yank Zethrid onto higher ground. When she was entirely out of the crater, Lance hastily drew his hands back with panting huffs.

Exhaustion crept up his spine and prodded the undersides of his eyes. Still, he reached his hands out again, lowering them for Ezor. She eagerly took hold, grinding her teeth together and grimacing to bear the pain of her newfound injuries. The mage pulled her up with assistance from her sloppy footholds as she scaled the cliff face. As soon as she kicked her last nudge over the ledge, Lance scuttled back and out of her reach, wheezing what felt like the last of his adrenaline into his palm and watching his enemy warily. She scrambled to her partner, ignoring Lance’s existence entirely, and she hooked Zethrid’s arm over her shoulder. Assuming his assistance finished, the brunet pushed off the ground and started a jog back to Keith. 

When he’d almost reached his husband, she spoke. “Thank you,” Ezor muttered, and Lance turned to watch her resettling herself in a standing position, her partner leaned on her bad shoulder. She looked truly grateful; her eyes were wide and the lines of her face were smoother, more peaceful, than they’d been all battle. Her bottom lip was pressed beneath sharp teeth after she finished speaking, however, and the sunburnt crack in the flesh there split further and began to bleed. Lance saw her eyes flick down to her dusted knees, then she spoke again. “But I can't carry her out of here with one arm.” While he knew he had no way of helping, the brunet felt guilt simmer behind his teeth nonetheless, and he clenched his jaw to suppress it. Without looking up, Ezor whispered, “I’m sorry.” Confusion rapped the space between his eyes as his brain tried to grasp what she was apologizing for. There wasn’t a second to catch up with her words as the woman winced and lifted her good arm. A spell was at the end of her fingertips, dark and swirling, but Lance couldn’t get out of the way. 

It hit.

Right as a panicked cuss—a reaction to the inescapability of the attack—dug its heels up the height of his throat to slip free, it hit.

His lungs swelled with suffocating, liquid pain as he felt his arm snap. Through the water in his eyes, he saw his enemies vanish, turning to invisible sources of kicked up dust, as they’d been before the battle. Their unsteady footfalls and sloppily placed trails of clouded dirt left Lance with a vague outline of where they might be, but with little confidence in his aim. Though he slung a betrayed, outraged electricity spell with his functioning arm, he failed to hit his target. Everything hurt again. He did his best not to scream, until he wondered why he was bothering; Keith couldn’t hear his pain and worry about it if he was unconscious. So, he belted a wail as he wrapped his hand around his crushed arm helplessly. 

Dammit! 

He’d misjudged her. He’d thought she hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. He’d pictured himself as her, put himself in her shoes, seen own potential loss of Keith as a comparison to her possible loss of her partner. He’d followed the rule of treating her how he’d have wanted to be treated in her situation. And,  _ damn, _ it hurt. 

When he turned back to his husband, the man had woken a tad up. Keith wore startled eyes, a panic having forced him up, likely when Lance screamed something bloody and gruesome. Yet the knight couldn’t fight the venom in his veins long, and after Lance kneeled and placed a palm on his cheek, promising they’d both be alright, Keith’s eyes rolled back once more. The brunet dragged his thumb over his husband’s cheek, making mud out of a mix of his fallen tears (Lance was crying buckets, way more than he could afford to lose in the desert) and the filth across Keith’s face. He wondered how he’d managed to convince the injured man of their wellness when he’d been dripping fear and pain from his eyes; he’d looked unbearably far from his lie. It was obvious he didn’t know shit about whether or not they’d make it. 

Perhaps, in truth, it had merely been a promise to try. 

His fingers dipped into the tear he’d made in Keith’s undershirt earlier. The smudge of tainted white, of infected skin, had grown wider than the opening he’d created. It climbed higher up, under the end of Keith’s shoulder armor where Lance couldn’t get. Frantic, he traced his fingers over Keith’s neck, peeling off the sweat-soaked ends of his ponytail and tucking loose strands behind his ear, hoping his efforts didn’t reveal more infected skin. There was no way he’d make it to help in time if the venom had already spread that far up. 

Dread tiptoed up his spine, treading lightly and going unnoticed until he was utterly seized by the panic. It rushed to the ends of his fingertips and he began to quake nervously. His fingers managed to peel the collar of Keith’s undershirt down after a few attempts where it slipped from his grasp and slapped against Keith’s collarbones. When it was finally revealed, the skin was warm and peachy, beyond the reach of the coming infection. For the time being, at least. 

Lance slumped. Horror was hot and steaming in his lungs, but relief wormed its way in, as well. The small victories were something he had to appreciate. They weren’t something he could take for granted. Keith still having time was a blessing. The fact that only one of his arms had been broken was, too. He had time. He had means of saving his husband. He knew saving Keith was feasible. All he had to do was stir up the will to move his fractured, aching bones to save him.

The pain in his broken limb started to dull and Lance forced his well arm under his husband’s armor, lifting the knight up enough to wiggle his backpack off his shoulders. Lance swung the sack over his own shoulders, so it sat on his stomach while his pack rested over his spine. He hooked Keith’s arm around his neck, then stood on fragile knees, dragging the man up as he did. His own arm, the good one, slipped around Keith’s waist to grapple for purchase over his  husband’s hip, which provided barely enough stability to begin walking. Keith’s armor, turned scalding hot by its hours soaking in the sunlight, weighed far too much when combined with the weight of a whole person. It was significantly more than Lance should have been carrying, considering all his wounds; the mage swerved to the side under the load. With stumbling steps, he steadied himself, and started a slow trek back to his village. 

His head rocked back as he went, eyes squinting to gauge the time by the sun. It burned a hot and bruising orange, but worst of all, it was at its peak in the sky. He needed to get home by nightfall, at the latest, and he only had a few hours before sunset. Carrying both Keith’s weight and his own would make his speed a quarter of what it had been on their way out. At best. And the heat would make it dwindle even more. Daylight hours were a crumbling building; an ill-placed nudge—a second of slowed pace, of hesitation—and it would come the rest of the way down, turning to the sand at the bottom of an hourglass. To time he didn’t have left. 

But knowing that only made it worse. It made him too attuned to every passing second, like it stirred an inner clock to motion, one that hadn’t been ticking before. He couldn’t tear his eyes from measuring the sun’s position in the sky for longer than a minute. His eyes needed to be on the horizon, on the ground in front of him, somewhere they’d be of use, but he could only watch the vanishing time. Every now and then, he’d turn and see how far he’d gotten from the crater (it was never far), but his eyes always found themselves back on the broiling sun before long. When his gaze did turn elsewhere, it was marred by purple splotches from staring at the heat for too extended a period, and it wasn’t able to see much of anything as a result. He tried watching the unsteady stumble of his toes over the dirt, tried to keep himself from tripping over dips in the ground, but his vision was blurred and spotted. 

Gods, Keith was heavy. His armor added an unbearable amount of weight, but Lance knew if he stopped to peel the added mass off, he’d never find the energy to force himself to move again. So, he kept swaying and almost collapsing along a jagged line forward. His path was swinging right, then left, then back again in a hazed zigzag. Sweat was thick and dripping, it was running down Lance’s scalp, and it was collecting on every inch of skin underneath Keith’s weight and added heat. The knight’s armor was still hot from sitting in the sun. When Lance put enough energy and time into breathing in a whole gulp of oxygen, he swore he could taste the scent of his skin sizzling rising up to land on his tongue. Keith’s armor felt like a frying pan taken fresh off the stove and flattened against the back of Lance’s neck, where the knight’s arm was hung, and pressed firmly over his hip, where Lance’s leather armor ended and where there wasn’t anything but cotton to shield his skin. 

Glancing back over his shoulder, he realized he couldn’t see the crater on the horizon anymore. There were fogged lines of mirages in the distance, steaming up his vision too heavily to see much farther than five or six footprints behind him. He groaned, facing forward again, without paying much attention to where he was going. Though he was walking, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he later learned he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness as he went. His path was drifting at least, that much was for sure. He managed and hour or two without lifting his head to stare at the sun and guess the time, and when he lifted it after the lapse in attentiveness, he finally learned exactly how far he’d drifted off target. The sun was setting over his right shoulder, he registered, like a dull ember sparking in his skull.

His legs stuttered to a stop. That wasn’t… right. They—he and Keith—had been heading west when they left town. It had been a straight shot to where they ran into their enemies. So, if he wanted to find his way to the village, he had to go east. If the sun was over his right shoulder—his head started to throb with a headache and his tongue began to sting with dehydration, so he let go of Keith’s hip and reached blindly for Keith’s pouch on his stomach in search of water—if west was to his right, that meant he couldn’t have been going east. Fumbling with the drawstrings of the bag with only one hand, he finally managed to dig his hand through the opening and he tugged out a water bottle. As he brought it to his lips and selfishly took a few mouthfuls, it was unsatisfyingly warm. The thirst itching up and down his throat went unquenched, and his tongue felt boiled. But he continued determining direction. West was to his right. Which meant north was behind him and he’d been going south for hours. 

_ Fuck. _

Whining about his misfortune, he shoved the bottle into the bag over his stomach, where it sat to gather more uncomfortable heat. Then, tugging the drawstrings tight, he turned to his left. Where the hell had he gotten himself? Just how long had he been off track? Surely, surely, he would have checked that he was going east before he left the crater. But had he? In actuality, he had no idea. Had he merely drifted over the course of all his hours of movement, and remained mostly on track for the majority of his travel time? Or had he been off from the start? He turned a few more degrees north to attempt to compensate for all the time he’d been going south, and started off at an uneven pace. 

It seemed every couple steps, Keith’s feet would catch in a divot, or Lance would stumble over a stone, or something equally speed shattering would hinder their progress. And the sun, the desert sun Lance had grown up freckling under and loving, was utter hell. It slowed their pace as much, if not more, than the tripping did. Because he could feel it turning the skin of his nape red, and he swore he could smell his dark hair burning and turning to ash under its rays. Keith’s cheeks were flushed with what was probably heat exhaustion—something Lance didn’t doubt he himself was likely developing, too—and his lips cracked with dehydration. Not that there was anything he could do about either; there was no shade to stop the sizzling creation of sunburn and he couldn’t get Keith to drink water if the knight was unconscious. Even though the heat had clearly and harmfully made its presence known across Keith’s skin, the knight was still shivering. In all likelihood, his body was gushing a monstrous fever in a fruitless mission to stop the venom’s progression. It wasn’t like Lance would have been able to tell, with how it was already far above fever temperature outside. At least 105 degrees if he had to guess. 

That’s not to say Keith’s worrisome condition was ignored, however. Lance tried to shield his husband from the broiling heat by covering him with his own shadow, ducking as much of Keith’s flushed cheeks and furrowed brows to his chest as he could. He hoped it would protect the knight from the sun while keeping him warm enough not to shiver, but it only seemed to do the former. Nothing Lance did could halt Keith’s occasional shudder or groan. He looked so miserable, it was sickening. And Lance’s head was already throbbing with the heat of midday, swarmed with a fogginess that made it hard to recognize the peril of their situation. Where was he? Where was safety? He couldn’t remember, he couldn’t  _ remember.  _ It felt like he couldn’t remember  _ anything  _ and it made his gut wrench and his eyes burn with sweltering, molten heat.

Keith looked awful, terrible, pale; his features seemed fragile, and weak, and helpless. There was a shudder in all of his breaths, there were sickly beads of sweat on the sides of his nose and under the ridges of his brows, and there came a few times where his wheezing breaths carried agonized groans with them. His skin had been vibrant and peachy before. Lance could recall the stunning shades of golden fruits and of the previous evening’s shining starlight across his cheeks as something so recent in his memories. But now the sunlit skin was fiery hot with fever, red and cracking with sunburn, and an ill shade of pale wherever the sun hadn’t yet ruined. The roots of Keith’s ponytail were positively sticky and dripping with sweat, and the drops of that sweat tumbled free and caught in the bags under his eyes each time Lance took a step and the knight jostled. Sometimes—often when Lance took a rough stumble and found himself hitting the ground, barely able to maneuver his husband out of the way of being crushed under him—Keith had peeled his eyes open. His dark, calculating eyes were glassy and unfocused. Each time they’d jerked open, they’d darted to the cuts on Lance’s cheeks from the explosion first, and following that, Keith had tugged his hands up to prod them tiredly, as though the wounds were puppet strings attached to and pulling at his arms. He’d made a pathetic noise every time he’d done it: a coo of delirious concern and protectiveness. No matter how hard he had fought to stay awake and to protect Lance, however, it hadn’t been enough. Every effort fell short and he was dragged back under into sleep with every failed attempt.

So, yes, Keith looked utterly atrocious. 

Yet, while Lance wouldn’t dare admit it aloud when his husband had venom shredding him from the inside, the brunet couldn’t claim to be any better off. His head.  _ Damn,  _ his  _ head. _ It burned. The insides of it, the rounded edges of his skull, felt like they were nothing more than a fireplace for a killer headache. Why did his head feel so incurably awful? He hadn’t been hit by any venom, his injuries were manageable, so why couldn’t he escape the swell of pain scraping along his skull? It had him feeling more than a little weak. Keith wasn’t complaining and he had it far worse. The man who was depending on him for help was acting far stronger than he was.  _ How pathetic is that _ , he mused. His head was swimming, aching and pulsating with a dull, nauseous pain that had a lump forming at the back of his tongue. Had him on the edge of a deep, violent illness. Even so, he should have been able to handle it. His husband needed him to grit his teeth and march through the pain and sickness. 

He swayed under the sun and under the added weight hanging limply from his side. Making sure he tightened his hold on Keith’s waist to keep from losing his grip, he put his tongue to the roof of his mouth, as though his migraine would fade like a brain freeze. Tugging his cracked lips into his mouth, he nibbled and ran his tongue along them. It was impossible to ignore his headache, but he squeezed his eyes shut to block it out anyway. His throat was aching as badly as his head, begging for more water, but he was certain he wouldn’t have been able to stomach it after he forced it down; his gut was flipping with nausea. Everything hurt and he swore he couldn’t bear it.

For a fleeting moment, for a breath of time, for the falling of a single grain of sand in his hourglass, he considered taking a break. Considered resting his eyes in a nap, taking all the weight off his shoulders and feet, and gulping a couple more mouthfuls of air down without all the physical exertion of carrying a fully armored knight pressing his lungs into knots. Considered taking breaths where he wouldn’t wheeze. With his head spinning and his entire consciousness rocking side to side behind his eyes, he was delirious enough to figure he had time for that. But his eyes opened and he saw the dark, nighttime, indigo swirls forming on the deepest part of the horizon, and he realized he hardly had any time at all. When he flicked his gaze down to Keith and his worsening state, another timer started counting down in his head, and he pushed himself harder. He did not— _ would not _ —have time to rest until he got to an antivenom. Though he was panting and coughing, though he could no longer make out a clear outline of his hand when he looked down at it, and though his spine started to jerk and shiver, he surged forward, pushing himself far past what was healthy. He only had to maintain his pace until he got home, he promised himself.

In hindsight, it probably hadn’t been the best decision. His head had already been pounding, heartbeat slamming on his eardrums and at the base of his skull at least ten times a breath, so exerting more energy, boosting his heart rate even more, should have been the last thing he wanted to do. But before, Keith had been willing to give his all for Lance. He’d taken the dart meant for him and, months ago, he’d nearly given his life up more times than Lance cared to remember. He’d gone so far, took so many hits, and still, when he reached the end and Lotor told him the price for getting Lance back was Keith’s life, the knight hadn’t been deterred in the slightest. Hadn’t hesitated an instant. Lance could never make that up to Keith, he could never go back and change what had happened, but he could do this. Nothing else was an option. Getting captured six months ago was irreversible—a fact which, when recalled, made the scar on the column of Lance’s neck feel swollen—but Keith’s injuries and the venom could be undone. They had to be. The doctors a few miles away (how far had they gotten from those doctors in their morning march to begin with?) could help.

He struggled, swayed, pushed past his dizziness and fatigue because the least Lance could do was to get Keith help. There had to be some way to break even for his husband taking the hit for him. It was supposed to be  _ him. _

Gods, it was  _ always _ supposed to be him. 

No one had any reason to be after him, but he was  _ always _ the target.  

His eyes burned when he realized that. Keith was hurt and it was  _ his fault. _ There was a dull sting of guilt in his chest, a sting that had been there for the past six months, and it burst and spread at that moment. Each and every square inch of his body was dwarfed in and swallowed by pain, pity, or guilt. Indirectly or not, he’d hurt his husband.  _ He _ had. That wasn’t what he’d wanted—he’d  _ never _ wanted that. Fingertips trembling, his hold on Keith began to waver. His knees gave out and he lost his ability to stay upright, and he was too weak to care for anything, even how his supply bag had crumpled under his weight. Thus, his husband folded with him, and his fall was hardly cushioned by Lance’s flimsy grasp on his waist. It made the brunet feel guiltier when he thudded violently against the dirt. 

It was an all-consuming type of guilt, the kind with burning cheeks and heavy eyelids and a cotton, useless tongue that couldn’t manage even the beginning of an apology. The kind that made the deepest part of his chest begin to feel hollow and swollen at the same instant. The kind that made his eyes soak and simmer in tears, until the water spilled over his cheekbones and caught in his blubbering lips. The kind that made the ends of his fingertips turn numb with anxiety and feel icy, despite the unbearable desert heat burning his skin. He couldn’t feel anything with them as he gingerly relocated them to where Keith’s head had pounded against his chest when the pair had fallen. He couldn’t feel the heat of his skin, the danger of his fever, the tangles at the roots of his ponytail. 

In fact, as he sprawled over the dirt, he realized all of his senses were diminished, not just his sense of touch. His ears were ringing too much to hear anything, his nose and mouth were both too parched and burnt to taste or smell, and his vision was blurred with tears he couldn’t afford to be wasting water on. The only thing he could easily feel was the pulse in his broken arm and the excruciating pain that shot up it every time he moved the limb. That, and how his skull still felt like an ice cream scoop was being dragged along the inside of it. He began to dwell on it. The longer he worried himself over his own condition and how he needed to bring Keith to safety regardless, the more irreconcilably dismal the whole situation seemed.

He let his head fall back when the bones in his neck began to pinch. If he was down, he figured he might as well take a breather. For a while, he watched the sky overhead, counting the seconds until a cloud rolled past—though the sky was clear and the moment an obstruction tumbled along never came—and then he rocked his head farther to spot the setting sun. Had he lifted his hand to check, Lance would have seen how the edge of the fiery ring was about two fingers’ width above touching the horizon. But the light caught on the tears in his eyes until everything looked like it was a part of the sun, so he couldn’t truly see where the sun was. What he  _ could _ see, however, was how little time he had. Oh, so little time, he managed to register through a headache that crushed his thoughts, as though the migraine was merely each individual brain cell bursting. 

Flattening a palm on the dirt, he pushed himself up. Or, tried to, because he sat up too hastily and his head started to swim again. His wrist buckled, he fell back, and his brain rattled as he hit the ground again. Keith rolled off his chest limply, flopped onto his back a foot or so away. He spun his view with a swiveled head, trying to spot where he was supposed to be going, and blinked away his tears. Things weren’t hopeless yet; he couldn’t afford to have things be irreversible. It didn’t matter that Keith was feverstruck and dehydrated, didn’t matter that venom was working it’s way up his arm towards his collarbones and heart because Lance would fix it, if only he was able to focus on finding the village. 

A defeated noise tugged at his vocal chords, quiet and soft: a pathetic, crushed whimper. He  _ had _ to get up, he  _ had _ to get help. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if the reason his husband died was because he wasn’t able to push himself hard enough soon enough. Hell, there was no way he’d be able to live with himself if his husband died at all. But his head was getting worse every second, his throat felt toasted by every effort Lance made to get enough oxygen, and his limbs were shaking more harshly than he could walk with. Getting up wasn’t possible, staying down wasn’t an option. Bringing a trembling fist to his mouth with a cough, he struggled to lift his head. More than anything else, he knew he needed to keep going.

His neck bent until his chin was flush against his collarbones, and the added heat of curling his body upon itself was an unwelcome sacrifice. He squinted his eyes, affirming which way he needed to start moving, but as he cleared his gaze from excess water, he discerned how little he needed to move. Glowing faintly in the descending nightfall, and sitting in an orange pool of magic and candlelight on the dirt around it, his salvation was there. The village was unbearably close, an intoxicatingly tranquil presence in Lance’s sight when compared with the death gnawing up Keith’s arm and the pain in his own limbs. It was a gulp of adrenaline that launched Lance upright. 

It was such an empowering burst of momentum and energy, that he had no issue maneuvering his husband up, too. Hugging both arms around Keith—the pain of his broken limb was dulled by the promise of help being so close—he hoisted the knight and dragged him along. “Hey,” he said, smashing through the film of silence that had worked its way over his lungs. He chanced unwrapping one arm from Keith to wave it in the air, in case anyone inside the village had poked a head around the fences at all his commotion. “Please! We need help!” If his shouting wasn’t snatching the whole village’s attention, then surely the scrape and clank of Keith’s armor was. He didn’t care, he  _ needed  _ whatever attention he could get because even  _ one _ person was enough to save them. “Please, please!” His toe snagged on a dip in the dirt. It sent him crashing down and threw all his weight on the fractures in his arm. “Help!” Keith’s body fell with him and pushed the last shout for help out of his lungs, before it rebounded off of his chest and sprawled next to him. 

Lance rolled his head to the side, watching the lights of the town flicker hopefully. He waited for a head to poke around the fencing, to spot his injuries and gather help. His ears were ringing, his heart was giving a last couple pumps of adrenaline laced blood, and it kept his hopes up. Until he ran out of that adrenaline and crashed, that is, and pain surged while energy faded. Eyelids getting heavy, his line of sight blurred again. Coated in dust, his palm was brought to the edge of his mouth to cradle another shout, but his throat was so dry, he managed nothing more than a squeaked wheeze before he sputtered into a coughing fit. Shakily, he reached for Keith’s bag on his gut in hopes of finding more water to gulp down, but he was only able to fumble blindly with the drawstrings and it yielded no results. Tears flooded his eyes, but he kept his gaze on the hazy town on the horizon, swearing he could make out a foggy figure rounding the corner of the entrance. Good arm lifting to wave them over, his head lolled to the side to stare at Keith. A grin cracked his lips apart as joyous tears swept dirt off the creases between his nose and cheeks.

“You’re gonna be fine,” he rasped. “They’re coming to help you, Keith.” His husband was unconscious, but Lance reached his hand out to cup the injury over the knight’s arm regardless, as though it would protect the spot from further spreading of venom or damage from the sun. Heart pounding harshly once more, his head throbbed a final time, before his vision fogged too much to see anything. He shut his eyes, then gave a few more brief coughs. The ability to cling to consciousness was slipping past his fingers as quickly as the light was slipping from the horizon. As the sun disappeared over the horizon, so did his last hold on control. 

But as he started to drown in his sleepiness, in the sweltering sun swarming him, in the dehydration and heat exhaustion—he was certain from his queasiness and fatigue that’s what it was—making his skin clammy, his eyes flickered open one last time. And as he squinted at the horizon, he realized he couldn’t see the village any longer. He began to struggle against unconsciousness, but it was too late; he was too deep in its waters. Though he was fighting sleep, it was a useless battle in the end. There was no circumstance in which he beat the sting of his eyes and the agony of his head. Still, he continued to pull back, to persist and linger in an awake state. And that’s how he realized it.

Truly, there had never been a chance at beating the venom.

Because no one was on the horizon to help. There was no village, no healers, and no antivenom within reach. How his own deliriousness had duped him with a well-placed, satisfying mirage, how his burst of hope had been entirely self manufactured, and how much everything hurt in every sense of pain (emotional, physical, and Gods, what else?); those were his last thoughts as he lost his battle. 

How no one was there.

How no one was coming to help.

How he’d failed his husband.

Tears rose up his tightened throat, constricting it further, and welled behind his eyes. There was guilt sitting thickly at the base of his spine and it shot a shudder up to his nape and slithered back down. His tears struggled free. Chest filled with a regret that was hot, sticky molasses, he dug the nails of his functional arm into the dirt, before he unfurled his fingers towards his husband. Desperation was the line between his brows as he did, pleading was the dry, burnt, sob-stained space between his lips. Sleep clawed at his temple and at the front of his forehead, and though he was crying and reaching for Keith, it wasn’t enough to hold him in consciousness. 

“Keith, I’m so sorry—” and then Lance was out, flickered away like the lights of the village that had never truly been within reach. 

But that’s not to say that, while unconscious, he could escape the remorse, the pain, or the fear for the uncertainty of what could have been coming. 

Because he couldn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!! If you enjoyed!! Please leave a kudo!! Cuz there are so few, even though I get a decent amount of hits!! And it makes me feel like people are disappointed in what they've read!! So if you like the story so far, I'd very much like it if you gave my poor heart some reassurance :)


	9. The Stains of Blood and Tears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAA  
> it's been forever (so long I had to reread what I wrote in previous chapters cuz I felt separated from it lol)! And this chapter is only like 13,000 words, I think? But I went to visit my grandmas and cousins across the country and stuff! Also had like a major three day long anxiety attack that I only kept at bay by watching every movie with iron man in it?? Now tony stark is, like, an embodiment of my victory over anxiety or something?? idk he makes me feel better about myself lol
> 
> anyway!! This chapter is kinda heartwrenching!! There's a bit of blood, but I didn't go into graphic detail on gruesome things or anything, so I doubt anyone will be triggered :-)
> 
> Y'all should start a "Lance cries" counter  
> take a shot of apple juice every time he cries
> 
> Without further ado, please enjoy! ;)

Lungs heavy with sleep, Lance breathed. In through his nose, out through his mouth, nose stuffed snugly against his plush sheets so it flattened and whistled, he breathed. There came a palm between his shoulder blades, firm and broad and warm with familiarity, so he burrowed his nose deeper. But the hand slid further up, carding through the soft and tangled hair above his nape. It was relaxing. The pleasant scritch of short nails over his scalp became all he could focus on. Lance tried desperately to reach sleep again, to find unconsciousness where his nose had buried itself in his pillowcase, but as gentle and as faint the scratch of his skin was, it remained enough to ground him. Groaning, he lifted his own hand to bat the other one away.

“Too cold out,” he slurred, muffled by the plumpness of his pillow. “Lemme sleep.” The mattress sunk next to him as someone flung themself down. As he bounced a smidge on the bed, the hand over his back was lifted off. It reasserted itself over the ridge of his hip, however, and tugged him closer. His ear hit a chest and the scent of his husband hit his nose. Curling his lips in a faint smile against the sheets, he finally rolled his head to the side to squint at Keith. Already dressed in the fabric of his under armor, it looked as though Keith remained home only to spend the last string of morning moments with his husband. “Fifteen more minutes,” Lance urged. His request was accentuated by the ticking and ringing of their grandfather clock down the hall, singing halfway through the song to alert the thirty minute mark of whatever morning hour it was. Keith grunted, looking far from well rested himself, as he traced the circles under his eyes with the hand that wasn’t occupied with Lance’s waist. 

“Maybe,” he relented. “I’m not really feeling up to work right now, if I’m being honest.” His hand fell away from his face to reveal a vaguely pained grimace, before his features softened and his palm sprawled across Lance’s cheek. Thumb brushing side to side a few times over the sleepiness written under Lance’s half-lidded eyes, he smiled. He tucked his fingers around Lance’s ears and hooked them over the back of his head to nudge him closer. It was met with a slight resistance as Lance began to fully awaken and absorb his husband’s appearance.

Both of Keith’s cheeks were flushed, not in the embarrassed or frustrated way, and his eyes were glassy. His hand, when settled on Lance’s cheek, had felt clammy. In his fingertips, there had been a faint tremor, too. Lance wedged a hand out from between their bodies (noticing how much warmer Keith’s was than his own) and placed it along his husband’s face, cupping from his temple to his chin. Voice soft and unaccusing, he whispered, “are you okay?” The skin under the pads of his fingers was too warm, but so was the reassuring smile he got in answer. Warm and almost convincing. 

“Yeah, I’m alright.” Keith peeled Lance’s hand from his cheek and gingerly kissed the knuckles of it. The brunet wriggled his fingers. He was dissatisfied with, and concerned about the validity of, his husband’s answer. When the knight gently wrinkled the corners of his eyes in a smile, though, Lance lost a bit of the fight in his gut. A soft shine of sunrise slipped between the two curtains over their window, drawing a narrow line of gold up Keith’s face and catching in one of his eyes in an innocent shimmer. Lance could see his own shadow over his husband’s body, the jut of his shoulder and the frizz and knots of his hair. He couldn’t argue with the serenity of the image. He couldn’t muster stubbornness to rival the peace in Keith’s hair, dewy from a recent bath and tossed sloppily about his side of the bed. Or to pick a fight with the eyelashes that clung to his cheekbones when he blinked, as though he was painting the sunlight they’d caught while open along the flesh there. Or to do anything other than marvel at the gentle pink of his cheeks and the darker shade of the same color on his lips.

Sighing, he stopped trying to start a quarrel over his husband’s wellness. “You’re sure,” he breathed as a final precaution, a final checkup to make sure Keith had an out where he could easily spill his feelings. A chance to admit he wasn’t sure, wasn’t alright. But he nodded, the fingers around Lance’s freshly kissed knuckles squeezing affectionately. “Okay,” he said, infinitely soft and infinitely concerned. He tucked his head closer to Keith’s chest, and he pulled his hand away from where it joined with his husband’s, to smooth it out over the knight’s arm in a tired, bed-ridden hug. Keith bristled, shifting his arm awkwardly under the contact and raising the limb so Lance’s hand slipped farther up and onto the shoulder. His face squished in discomfort. “Keith?”

“My arm burns a little,” the admittance gained him the furrowed brow of his husband and lost him the heat of Lance’s forehead against his chest, “I’m sure it’s fine.” Lance tried to curl his fingers under the collar of his husband’s stretchy shirt, so he could tug it back enough to get a look at Keith’s arm. But, when he attempted that, Keith rolled his head to rest his cheek over Lance’s wrist, holding him in place and keeping his fingers from managing to grasp the fabric. “It’s nothing, I promise.” Making a fragile, uneasy noise, Lance curled his fingers in protest to shove the chin atop them aside. 

“Lemme see, then.” He bunched his hand into a fist and it wedged Keith’s face up enough that he had access to his hand’s mobility again. His husband quickly lifted his other hand to block him with a tight squeeze of his wrist, though, and Lance grunted in frustration. “Keith, for the love of—” his head gave a strong pound and he yanked his hand back, sucking a wincing breath into his lungs and fracturing his sentence. The pain throbbed another time, then once more, and it had Lance sucking his bottom lip between his teeth in a grimace. Instantly, the pounding scrambled instantly to his temple as his head fell forward and against Keith’s chest again. “Shit,” he breathed shakily as he failed to combat the steady ache between his ears, despite the movements of his prodding fingertips across his temple. Though his eyes were tightly shut in a grimace, he knew Keith was reaching for his hand by the shifting of the mattress. As though his muscles weighed nothing and gave no resistance, his husband managed to slowly take the gentle massage of his fingers away.

He pushed Lance’s head back from where it was crowded against his collarbones and sat them both up. Lance hadn’t wanted to, but he had subconsciously craned his neck to reach more of Keith’s touch on his temple. Keith curled his fingers and tugged them through his hair once. Then, flattening a palm over Lance’s forehead, he spoke with a clear frown in his voice. “Honestly, I’m more worried about you—”

“You shouldn’t be,” Lance answered quickly. As he spoke, his eyes had opened and the world had swiftly felt too bright and too heavy a burden. “I’m just cold, that’s all.” His gaze flicked out the window next to their bed, catching a glimpse of snow on the ground outside through the sliver of space between the two curtains. Its reflection of the morning sunlight was even more overwhelmingly bright, however. He fluttered his lashes in an attempt to dispel the burn it caused in his eyes before it could reach and reactivate his headache. Slowly, his stare fell back upon his husband and his deeply furrowed brows. “But we don’t even know what’s up with your arm, so I’m worried. Just lemme take a look, please.” Keith’s thumb brushed a tantalizing circle on his temple, then his hold skimmed along his cheek and down his nape, until it settled just to the side of the dip of his spine, like a trail of warm water dripping along his body and pooling. Saying nothing, the knight brought his other hand to sit on the other side of his back. 

Suddenly, he tightened his hold and rolled onto his back. The motion brought Lance, too, and his face smothered back across his husband’s collarbones, while the rest of him shared the body heat with the remnants of Keith’s form. “How do you know I’m not ‘just cold’, too?” Lance said something muffled by the knight’s shirt, and his husband chuckled, tugging one hand back up to keep the brunet from removing his nose from where it was nestled. He pet along Lance’s scalp for a moment, before he let the man up. Though Lance sprang up, Keith managed to maintain a gentle touch just above his nape, and though Lance had gathered his lips into a pout, his husband kept his soft smile. His fingers over Lance’s neck scrabbled for a second, searching for a solid grip, then found it and used it to draw Lance forward. They barely missed each other’s lips, Lance only a little too low to hit Keith’s whole mouth. Still, Keith kissed what he could, nibbled what he could reach.

Lance lifted his arms to tangle his fingers in the damp ends of his husband’s hair, forgetting why he’d been so determined to speak in the first place. He let Keith do as he pleased for a few breaths, let him command the movements of his upper lip as he shifted where he sat along his torso. Distractedly, the brunet worked himself from laying across his husband to sitting over his lap, and Keith’s hand—the one not still drawing easy, drunken circles on his neck—eagerly answered by dropping lower than where it had been cupping the arch of his spine. Gripping mindlessly at the ends of his husband’s hair, Lance used his new, higher position to kiss all of Keith’s mouth. He tried to, at least, but Keith ended up merely switching his attention from sucking and biting at his upper lip to dragging his teeth along his lower one, instead. And Lance let him, humming contentedly at the feeling.

He could feel the hand on his neck fumbling lower to mirror the other hand’s position, but he didn’t truly register it until it reached below his hip, squeezed a grip there, and used the grip to switch his and Keith’s spots. His legs were sprawled wildly; they were sitting atop and straddling Keith’s hips, their backsides were resting over Keith’s knees, and they bent at their own knees, but remained unable to touch their toes to the sheets. When Lance’s head hit the pillow Keith’s had been soaking with the ends of his hair before, the lip his husband had been giving attention to was forced free. The brunet made a soft, pleading noise as his hands clambered up to tug his husband’s head forward again. Keith didn’t let him get ahold of his head, instead bringing his hands from where they’d squeezed around Lance’s backside, to his wrists, where he could push Lance’s desperate hands back down to the bed. “If my arm was that bad off, I wouldn’t have been able to do any of that,” Keith said. 

Lance huffed through his nose, trying to jerk his wrists free of Keith’s tight grasp. But he couldn’t try too hard when he had such an attractive angle of Keith’s features. The knight’s head hung over his own; his hair came down like their own private wall of curtains. Through the curtains on the window, a line of gold still shone into the room. It scattered as it hit Keith’s hair, speckling over the side of his nose and the swell of his cheek through the openings in hair it could find. Keith was grinning, eyes bright despite the darkness of their room and the equal dimness of their secluded, little ring, where Keith’s hair made most everything seem dark. 

Swallowing thickly, Lance struggled for the motivation to even attempt to free his wrists. Did he want the freedom to pull Keith down again? Not really, if it meant losing the view. He went fully still—his lack of struggle made the corners of Keith’s eyes wrinkle smugly—and smiled softly up at his husband, smiling more when the knight shifted his grip so their fingers laced. Keith dove forward of his own accord to land a kiss over Lance’s chin. The brunet’s eyes flitted closed contentedly as his husband worked his way downward with tickling pecks. His fingers squeezed at Keith’s hand when the knight’s mouth opened to drag his teeth down the soft spot on Lance’s neck. Grinning against the heat of Lance’s throat, Keith pushed his husband’s hands farther into the bed. 

A moment of motionlessness passed, then the tickle of Keith’s canines clasped a little harder as his mouth closed around the spot he’d been giving gentle attention. His teeth dug a little deeper, tongue pressing against the sublimely pinched flesh, and Lance gave a soft, pleased, mindless, and delighted sigh. More of a mewl, really. The profound feeling of comfort and safety settled across his stomach, relaxing each of his muscles and lulling him into the drowsy tickle at the base of his skull. His world, in that moment, became nothing more than the couple cubic feet around him. But as Keith finally began to suck at the spot, the second Lance felt his mind go entirely fuzzy, his awareness spread once more; the unnoticed click and tick of their clock down the hall turned into the loud song of the forty five minute mark of the hour. Stirring, he fluttered his eyes to full clarity. Safety waded back out into the depths of his mind. “Wait,” he said voicelessly, still a little dazed and blissed out. He tightened the grip of his fingers, as though the hold could halt his husband’s movements in the slightest. 

Keith gave a thoughtful hum as he pulled away. In what Lance knew was a teasing manner, the knight lifted the back of his hand to wipe the moisture of his sloppy kisses from his lips. Whining, Lance began to jostle his wrists again to gain his husband’s attention. Not paying the struggle any mind, Keith leaned his torso back (dragging Lance’s hands with him), as though the new angle would allow him to see around their door frame and read the precise time. Lance knew he couldn’t see the clock at all; he wrinkled his nose frustratedly. “Your fifteen extra minutes are up,” he observed. “I’ve gotta get to work. Your shop opens in an hour and fifteen minutes, and we know how long you take to get ready, so you oughta start now.” Swinging his legs, Lance found himself feeling utterly helpless and felt a plea bubbling behind his tongue.

“Keith, c’mon, you can stay a little longer,” he murmured. He furrowed his brows and widened his best pair of puppy eyes, jutting his bottom lip out in a silent continuation of his suggestion. The knight didn’t turn to face Lance’s begging expression, however, so his watery gaze was wasted.

“Sorry, no can do. The head knight is due at the castle on the hour,” he said, lifting his voice in pitch to mimic how the queen might have said it. “I gotta leave now.” Keith unwound his fingers from Lance’s and swung a leg off of the bed. He laughed through his nose at the insulted guffaw that tumbled from Lance’s mouth, before standing the rest of the way up. Lance scrambled into sitting up after him, sputtering frustratedly. 

“You asshole,” he snapped, “Keith, you one hundred percent timed it like that on purpose.” The bitter man slapped a hand on Keith’s shoulder as leverage to get himself out of bed, but the knight winced and stumbled away, shoving the hand back. Lance easily obeyed the nudge, pulling his hand to his chest as he tumbled a little. He stepped the rest of the way onto the ground, feet slapping as they stuttered and tripped without the support of Keith’s shoulder. “Whoa, hey, what’s up?” All of the mirth had vanished from Keith’s eyes when they reopened from his wince. Tucking his hand along his husband’s cheek, he frowned. “Your arm hurts that bad,” he whispered, realization clinging to his voice as much as early morning grogginess clung to his stumbling feet. He tried to ignore the defensive grimace his husband mustered. “Let me see. Maybe I can heal it.” His tone was infallible and Keith begrudgingly brought his fingers up to the collar of his undershirt. 

“It looks odd, but I’m not sure what caused it.” Keith pulled the fabric back, revealing an uneven discoloration of white atop the normal, healthy pink. Lance’s line of sight wavered as he took it in. When he lifted his fingers to prod the disease, he found his reach falling short of actually touching, found it hesitating before it could connect. And when they finally did brush along the injury, it was blistering hot and his stomach tightened with concern. His fingers started to tremble with an unnamed, unexplainable panic, as the sight left him with a disgustingly and incomprehensibly familiar taste on his tongue. As though he knew what he was looking at. As though he could put a title or a reason to the patch of rotten milk stain climbing up towards his husband’s throat. As though he knew what about it he was meant to fear. 

Something in him knew what had caused it. Some part of his brain, a part that wasn’t the part capable of organizing words and thoughts. Yet the information, the meaning behind the wound, refused to clamber up to the part of his brain in which he could decipher and utilize it. So, he stared with a dry tongue and an empty mind, fingers tracing slowly over the injury in panic. “That’s not,” he began, “that’s not right. It shouldn’t look like that.” Dread began to tickle the back of his neck, and as it seized a tight, unbreakable grip, his head felt as though the dread had rattled it about until he was too dizzy to see. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. 

A trickle of numbness worked its way up his arm, forcing Keith’s warmth to leave his fingertips and making the sensation of the bed at his heels fade. He floated in the darkness behind his eyelids, sucked into a space that existed solely to be deep and suffocating. And when he tried to crawl out of it (tried to crawl out of the numbness, of the cold that nothingness brought, of the lack of vision, and of the drowning sensation), he couldn’t. His eyes wouldn’t open, or maybe they had and they merely couldn’t see. He called out, but nothing tumbled out of his mouth. Only one thing managed to wedge itself past his lips, and it was worming in, rather than out. A sort of suffocating, liquid alarm.

It dripped into his lungs and he wanted to scream, to wheeze, to cough it back out. 

He was drowning, drowning, skin hot under the assault of his panicking heartbeat. Cheeks flushed, throat raw, lungs heaving, spreading the suffocation deeper. His chest burned. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t gulp a single mouthful of oxygen down through the muck clogging his airways. Lance ordered his hands to scrabble uselessly across his chest, yet couldn’t feel the movement.

Though every inch of his skin was numb, though he couldn’t tell where any of his limbs were, he very distinctly felt fingers trace a line over the scar on his neck. The pad of a forefinger dragged one way across it, then the other, then curled to scrape a nail along it instead. If his eyes opened, he was certain, from the sudden feeling of warm liquid, he’d see blood leaking from the wound as easily and fluidly as it had been spilling when he’d first gotten the injury. 

The fingernail was joined by others, and they all wrapped their touch around his neck. Less than a second later, they began to clutch his throat and clench a fist around it. He was without any feeling in his body other than that pain, but he knew his legs were kicking violently out in an attempt to stop it. But it didn’t work.

He was acutely aware of a burn in his lungs and a heat in his cheeks from lack of oxygen, and he blearily cursed his body’s selective sense of touch. Only pain. There was a sting of icy cold scratching up his arms and needling his cheeks. Some part of him dimly registered it as the pricks that came with limbs not getting enough oxygen. His fingers curled—or he assumed they did; he couldn’t feel them aside from the pinprick of cold—to get the blood flow back, but the stinging tingle remained. A new pain came through when his curled fingers finally broke through the skin of his palms with their nails. In his gut, he hoped it would be enough to ground him, but as his head began to swim too much, he knew it wouldn’t be. 

Ordering every limb to stop and having no way of knowing whether or not they had, he gave up. 

Even so, he couldn’t help but to wonder if the hand around his throat was Keith’s. He’d been the last person Lance had seen before his senses sunk away, after all. After that fleeting, heart-wrenching thought, he gave in entirely. 

Abruptly, a burst of air made it past his lungs. All of his senses knocked against his skull at once. Hands flying first to his neck, they prodded in search of blood, and a wound, and those tight, winding fingers he'd felt suffocating him moments before. They slipped down, free of the stick and grime of the dirt-coated blood he’d been expecting. He groped along his chest, finding it rising unevenly, unsteadily. 

His eyes opened, watery and burning and wide, and he blinked away tears to see dry ground and a stormy night sky approaching on the horizon; an hour or two away, at best. Not the void he'd been trapped in before. Lips dry and cracking, he was vividly in tune with the hot air rushing past them as he screamed. Every hair on his arms was upright. Each pound of his heart left his hands too shaky to function. Not a single blink of his eyes came without a new stream of terrified, pained tears.

All at once, awareness slammed against his forehead. 

The knowledge of where he was had struck him hard. 

The knowledge of his visions being a dream—a nightmare—had struck him harder.

But worst of all, there was the knowledge of some of the dream being deadly, and real, and desperately pressing. Because that fact hit him square and solid between his shoulder blades, until he was wheezing and his heart was sputtering. 

Another nightmare. He wasn’t drowning.

He wasn’t home, Keith wasn’t awake and worried in front of him, his husband’s injury wasn’t hot and blistering beneath his palm. No, Lance was splattered across the desert floor, just as he’d been before he had passed out from—likely—dehydration during sunset. Naturally night was in full swing by the time he awakened. The ground was painted with the colors of nighttime, and with a spare splash of the moonlight that clambered its way through the thick clouds. Clouds that must have spread their way across the sky while he was unconscious. The desert had fully accepted the frigid nature of its nights while he was out. None of the lingering daytime heat remained. It hadn’t clung to rocks or the undersides of his thighs in wait of his consciousness; it had merely abandoned him to suffer the uninhabitable cold alone.

Alone. 

No, no, he wasn’t supposed to be alone! Where was—

He spotted his husband at his side, below his line of vision while laying down, and still fitfully unconscious. His eyelids were twitching as though he was having a nightmare, and pity welled thick and heavy in Lance’s gut. Waddling closer to him on his knees, he succumbed to his desire to brush his fingertips over the backs of those restless eyelids. Like his touch would ease the pain causing their sporadic motions, or provide a comfort to counteract it, or to bury the knight’s nerves in something pleasant. Yet his touch did nothing except make Keith dispel another pained breath from his nose. The man remained thoroughly disturbed and plagued by something Lance hadn’t yet motivated himself to check up on. The venom.

His eyes flickered to where he knew the wound would be. Under the layers of metal and cloth, he knew it’d sit. A winding, stinging, piercing curse, which continued marching a bold path towards its goal higher up Keith’s body, while the man was defenseless and unconscious. The man couldn’t even tell Lance what hurt, which parts of his body had been pricked with agonizing infection, or where Lance’s efforts might be able to cure some of what ailed him. When Keith could do nothing, could he do anything either? 

Something burned in the core of Lance’s chest at the swarming thoughts of futility. Though it did nothing to ease the frigid licks of air kneading into his skin, he could easily detect the bubble of frustrated heat that had popped and dripped down into his joints. Each knuckle and each aching section of his spine swelled with anxious warmth. The effect of a thundering pulse pumping hot blood. Nonetheless, he shifted his hands to pull at the top of his husband’s undershirt. 

Knowing it had been hours since he’d last checked, he also knew, when he determined the progression of the disease, it was going to be worse than what he could stomach. Needless to say, his guess had been right. When he pulled back the sweatied, bloodied, scraps of dark grey cloth, the sickly white had already spread to the end of the clothing’s coverage. The outskirts of its effects speckled into the sunburnt sections of Keith’s shoulders and the far part of one of his collarbones.

Hands retreating to the worried knots in his hairline, Lance whimpered into the empty night. He tugged at his hair, his fingers caught in the tangles, and his scalp stung, but the prickling grounded him. Like a pinch to his arm in order to be certain he was awake. He found such certainty felt like a blessing and a curse, if there ever was an example of such a duality. The reality of the situation quelled some of his panic, as he knew he wouldn’t wake to discover the current situation was another dream that hid something even worse. But it also stirred terror because he knew the helplessness and the horrid nature of the situation remained entirely real. Irreversible. While he knew he couldn’t wake up to find things worse, it also meant he wouldn’t wake up to find things better, either. 

The heels of his hands fell into the dips at the corners of his eyes and pressed. He needed—achingly, sickeningly, painfully, he needed—to cry, but he wasn’t going to waste any of their dwindling supplies on something so useless. They were too far out from help for him to drink their water, only to then let it drip freely back out through grief-stricken eyes. His legs curled under him as he hung his head and failed to stop the tears. A hiccup rattled in his chest and one of his palms smothered his lips to quiet it. Gods, he felt useless. 

One of his hands stayed pressed desperately to his lips, while the other dipped to card through the ends of his husband’s ponytail. He clenched it in a fist as he curled his chin closer to his chest, constricting his airways further and making the sounds of his sobbing more apparent to anyone close enough to hear. Wheezing sputters of air in, and choking sounds of coughs back out. Not that there was anyone close by to hear. An inkling of a thought in the pits of his mourning brain told him there could be someone out there in the desert. Someone dangerous—their enemies would be back eventually—or maybe someone who could help, but he wouldn’t see either coming. He couldn’t make out anything on the landscape between the water in his eyes and the cloudy shield smothering the majority of the moonlight. 

He couldn’t do it.

He couldn’t make it out of this one.

Not without Keith. 

Another wall broke behind his eyes and more tears pounded on the insides of his fluttering eyelids. His mouth opened and wailed into his palm, then closed back around his bottom lip to gnaw at it anxiously. Gnawed until the peeling parts of it had been torn off and what was left of his flesh was raw, bleeding, and stinging from the ice in the air. Gnawed until his brain stopped reminding his instincts that chewing that harshly would only make the wounds worse. Gnawed until it became entirely mindless to peel the drying skin off. 

Gnawed until it hurt about an eighth as much as his uselessness had begun to hurt. 

His head was drooping low and pathetic over Keith’s. When he peeled his eyelashes from his cheeks, he could see all his tears had made mud out of the dirt on his husband’s cheekbones. He took his hand from Keith’s hair and reached a thumb towards the mud, smearing it. Drawing the hand back to his stomach, he wiped it clean and tried again. More tears fell, though, and only made more mud he couldn’t clean up. Frustrated, he started to cry harder. It made his throat turn as raw as his lips had turned and made his nose begin to burn. 

Helplessly, he rubbed at his own cheeks, floundering to pick up water on the ends of his fingers. Finding that as useless as cleaning mud had been, he lowered his hands around his jittering arms and dug his nails into the sunburns along the flesh. The pressed skin bleached white under his fingertips and only reminded him more of the venom in his husband’s shoulder and neck. Uselessness—the hollow chest, empty stomach feel of it—returned and pawed at his vocal chords until he whimpered and wailed again. Screamed at the storm clouds a few hours away, at the moon shining just enough light to illuminate his failures, at anything that would listen. Anything that would make him feel less alone. Something burned in his arms, the splitting of flesh under his abusive fingertips, and with his pleading, he tore his throat into silence. 

In an attempt to calm his racing heart and to ease his overworked windpipe, he fumbled for one of his water bottles. He let his fingers fall around the drawstrings of the bag over his stomach and tugged. As the opening began to unfurl, he pinched it and pulled it wide enough to fit his hand. Shaking, he knocked the contents around until his fingernails clacked against cold glass. The cork popped as he tugged it out and the frigid mouth of the bottle felt somewhat soothing along the new bruises tracing his lips. It eased his throat, too, and as he was able to breathe painlessly again, his hyperventilation slowed and his uncontrollable sobbing became something more controllable. That said, the lack of scalding tears and loud bawls left him feeling cold and his lungs clenched as though he was drowning in the silence around him. 

A breeze scuffed up some dirt, tossed it around a few feet—Lance jolted and his vision focused at the memory of what a fake breeze had meant before—but when it settled, everything was silent again. After shoving the bottle back into the bag, he wrapped his unbroken arm around himself once more, beginning to scratch at the sunburnt skin of his other arm. His knees were tugged up under his chin. Then, he rolled his head forward to tuck his nose betwixt them, lips and breath warming the fabric of his pants. There was a tremor forming at the base of his spine telling him he was on the brink of another melt down, but he was calm enough to think again.

He needed to get home. But he couldn’t really tell which way home was anymore. When he’d passed out, he’d completely lost his direction. The sun, his only guide, was gone and he didn’t know any star maps. And it wasn’t like he could trace his and Keith’s footsteps from the morning, either; he’d gone incredibly far off that trail when he’d trekked the wrong direction for, Gods, probably hours after the battle (his eyes stung at the memory of yet another fuck up). Even so, he figured his correction had put him  _ almost _ in the right direction again. So, if he trailed a finger up the skid marks he’d left before passing out, he could flip the angle to where he wanted to go and calculate a path that would get him  _ almost _ home. Close enough he could guide himself off of childhood memories, maybe. 

Lance shut his eyes and breathed out his nose. One problem handled. There was still the issue of Keith, however. His husband might not make it that far; he had no idea how far from home he was at that moment. In fact, at the rate the venom had been spreading, Lance would be shocked if he made it to morning. Keith’s clogged, rattly breaths were something far past merely ragged, he was radiating quite a few more degrees of heat than he should have been, and even the skin that wasn’t bleached by venom was paled. Could Lance even do anything about it? Rush home and hope he was fast enough? That was a lousy plan. 

What could he do? Perhaps his nightmare had been onto something. In it, he’d suggested he try to heal Keith’s arm. Maybe he could heal the stain of venom with spells, even if only a little, as long as he targeted the original wound. The exhaustion pinching his nose and the shudders scraping their nails up his spine told him he’d likely have no luck in the endeavor of sparking a spell, but he had to try. He hadn’t an ounce of energy left in any of his muscles, but he had to wring the cloth for those last few drops of water. Any ounce of logic would tell him he couldn’t do it, but he had to do whatever he could to buy his husband more time.

Shifting his knees back under himself, Lance hovered over his husband. “Hey,” he whispered, wondering if the unconscious man was having dreams of his own and whether or not Lance’s words would weave into them. “You’re gonna be okay.” Lance dragged a hand soothingly over the side of Keith’s cheek. “Just hang in there, alright?” One of Keith’s hands twitched and Lance forced his useless hand to grasp it, so his functioning hand could stay splayed across his husband’s face. “It’s all gonna be okay.” His unbroken palm lifted and resettled itself over the tear in Keith’s undershirt. “I promise.”

He took one last breath to calm his heart, then focused on mustering any magic he could. A glow twinkled down his wrist and fanned out over his hand, licking along his husband’s wound, but it wasn’t enough. Lance eyed the spread of white up his shoulder; his chest sunk to his stomach when he noticed it wasn’t retreating. His eyes flickered back to his hand as he forced more magic past his fingertips. It started to make his head pound and his ears ring. It started to make his toes feel numb and make his eyesight blur, until he clenched his eyelids closed all together. It started to make his heart jump back up to his chest, and then clamber further up his throat, until he could feel his rapid pulse in his every swallow and until he felt he couldn’t breathe. But he didn’t stop. 

He forced more magic out. 

He’d long since wrung the last drop of water out of the cloth. Still, he was finding more water. Pushing and pushing, his fingers started to burn with the magic he hardly had left. If his magic was the water in the washcloth, he was turning the cloth so dry it had begun to smolder and rot. And he was the cloth. His body felt like it was decaying while he was still inside it, peeling apart from the fingertips that were forcing spells. Like they were the tear in a seam that had the rest of him unraveling into a burnt, aching mess. 

Spine crumbling under the weight of overexertion, he jerked forward. His eyes were leaking water, he swore he could taste blood on his tongue, and he couldn’t feel anything past the pain wracking every nerve in his body. He kept pushing as long as he could, shuddering with the pain of it, while hoping the venom would be gone when he opened his eyes. When he felt unconsciousness creeping up on him again, crawling to the front of his head and pulsing in an exhausted migraine, he stopped. Only then did he stop. Tumbling forward harshly enough to get whiplash, he stopped.

Slowly, painstakingly, he peeled his eyelids up. Even that motion burned; all his muscles were drained. He furrowed his brows until his sight focused, locking on the long line of scrapes in the dirt where he’d dragged Keith to get where they were. After he could see, he pushed himself up to peer at the dent he’d made in the wound’s progress. All that strain had to have yielded some result, he assumed. Wiping at the tears beneath his eyes, he swept his gaze over his husband’s collarbones. 

Tears crept back to his vision, a mix of exhaustion and desperation, as Lance saw the stain of white was spread as far as it had been before. Not an ounce of newly healed flesh. The cuts and bruises on Keith’s exposed skin were gone, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Venom held strong to Keith’s flesh.

Lance let the cold fill his lungs with one gasp of air, before he rocked his head back and screamed. He didn’t scream sentences, or curses on his enemies, or vulgarities, or even words at all. It was one long, loud, agonized shriek that didn’t expel any of his frustration. The mage glared and narrowed his gaze at the streaks of stars he’d smeared with his teary vision, at the between dark, nighttime clouds. And he screamed his lungs empty. Another icy breath in, and he was screaming again. His breaths sounded hollow and wide in the desolate desert. Sounds filling so much vacant space, but meaning so little. 

He was beyond frustrated, beyond scared. He’d worked himself down to his bruised knuckles, he’d drained every muscle he had, he’d given every ounce of energy he had to everything he’d done. Back before they left, he’d given his all by volunteering to go with Keith. Once again, he’d given his all as he fought off Keith’s possessed attacks, then once more in the draining march through the desert. Still, he had enough more to give to survive almost drowning, then even more to fight off two enemies that had them beat in every way. Bigger and stronger, in Zethrid’s case, and faster, better with magic, in Ezor’s case. But even so, Lance had beaten them. Half battered, alone, without his only ally, he managed to win. And he’d given his all to some asinine idea of mercy when he’d offered to  _ help _ his enemies. What did he get for it? More blows, more bruises, more wounds. 

More losses.

He’d given his all, given it all away. 

So, he screamed. It wasn’t like it mattered. No one was there to hear and judge, no one was there to tell him there was a better way to vent, no one was there to wrap him in their arms and tell him it would be okay. Besides, if there was anyone there to tell him as much, they’d be lying to him.  _ Nothing _ was okay. Okay would be if he had Keith to help him. Okay would be if he could heal Keith’s or his own wounds. Okay would be if he could see his surroundings, if he could see where he was headed. Okay would be any sign that things  _ might _ be okay  _ later. _ But he didn’t even have that. 

Eventually, he ran out of air in his lungs and was too winded to take in and immediately push out another lungful. He silenced, he licked his lips calmly, and he caught his breath. Keith’s hand was still in his own broken one, pulse thrumming weakly against his fingertips, and he gave it a squeeze that eased some of the wrinkles between his husband’s brows that must have appeared as Lance was yelling. Guess that meant he probably could hear what Lance was saying after all. The brunet hoped he hadn’t plagued his husband with too many awful thoughts, but he didn’t dwell on it. 

Letting go of Keith’s hand, Lance pushed himself up. Then, after cracking his knuckles, he bent down and pulled his husband alongside him, one of the knight’s arms slung over his shoulder. In a second, he’d gauged the path they needed to take. One more and he’d started along it, cursing the night chill of the desert all the while. Against his sunburnt skin, Keith’s armor felt more frigid than it truly was. He wondered if moving Keith would be one of those winter horror stories with a tongue against a metal pole. Wondered if his already peeling skin would tug off and bleed. Should he worry for infection? Could the venom be transferred? His mind whirred because he had nothing to distract him. Whirred and spiraled down the darkest, most dire paths to the worst possibilities that had him brainstorming more ways things could go terrifyingly wrong. 

Worst of all, none of those terrifying results seemed particularly implausible. 

He’d been dehydrated the day before and his head still ached with the migraine from it; he was probably  _ still _ dehydrated. Not like he’d had much to drink earlier. Hunger pawed at his stomach, too. Lance found himself unable to go more than—what he guessed was—ten minutes without a drawn out protest from his stomach, loud and painful against his insides. It wasn’t surprising, as he hadn’t been taking care of himself with any nutrients, or any water, or any rest (because passing out doesn’t leave anyone feeling rejuvenated, so he hardly counted it). Of course his body was creaking, and groaning, and tottering. All his focus on Keith left him without much focus for himself, which had him seconds from collapsing. 

But such a realization was hardly a tickle in his mind. He had bigger concerns. Each wobble of his ankle didn’t draw so much of a glance down, each claw of hunger in his gut didn’t elicit a flinch, and each swipe of his cotton tongue over his lips had become normal enough as to not remind him of his thirst. No, they didn’t catch his attention at all, because his gaze was firm on the line of the horizon ahead of him, swiping back and forth to catch a glimpse of what he hoped would eventually be his village. His ears were focused on the rustle of dried bushes and the scuttle of stray bugs, waiting for anything that sounded vaguely threatening or like the foes he’d left behind earlier. The whole of his processing power was occupied with the looming panic attack he was holding at bay solely with his intense focus.

Luckily, his intense focus didn’t pick out anything noteworthy or suspicious. 

For a while, that is. 

After an indiscernible chunk of time—indiscernible because the passage of time had become somewhat of a blur due to how unbearably silent and lengthy it was, as well as how empty handed his searching had left him—he heard sounds in the distance. A scuffle. And not the soft rustle of a leaf bouncing along the ground, a bug scuttling about, or even the hasty movement of a lizard to its next perch on a rock. It was something larger, heavier. Pounding. He must have approached something, something alive, because the sound was decently close (or perhaps it was merely large enough that its sound could be heard at great distances, too), and he hadn’t seen anything approach him

The sound came again, and Lance swiveled his head in attempts to locate the noise. This time, the noise wasn’t only the scrape of something along the dirt, but it came with a slap of something weighty on the ground. Lance felt his ankles wobble as it hit. He felt queasy from it; the loud pound of something heavy slamming into the earth reminded him too much of his recent battle with Zethrid. Her bold, hefty, precision-aimed blade and its crash of thunder as it split cracks in the desert floor. He thought of the rumble of explosions after the battle’s end, too. His skin got hot with the memory, flushed across the cheeks and burning in the scrapes he’d gotten from his harsh landing. Evidently, neither the thought of Zethrid nor of the explosions was welcome.

After clearing his head, he was able to hear another crash like before without suffering the nerves preceding an anxiety attack. Whatever was causing the racket was certainly alive and moving, because the thudding was at a constant, heavy, patterned pace. The slapping, however, was something Lance couldn’t identify. He wasn’t sure what the source of it could be; it was far more unsteady than the other noises, and whenever there wasn’t a slap, there was a gravelly scraping noise. Desperately, he tried to locate where it was coming from. 

Still searching, Lance slipped Keith off his shoulder, kneeling to rest him on the dirt. The knight had a crease between his brows and his breathing remained short and labored; he was a picture of unwell. As Lance laid Keith out, he ran his functioning hand across his husband’s temple, noticing not only the swelling of quick heartbeat there, but also the surge of a fever. It made his own heartbeat rev up, made his own temperature blend with a nervous hotness. Anxiety took hold of his neck with each bead of sweat beginning to trickle down it. Panic worked in contrast to the chill in the night air. 

His ears had started to ring with pessimism. Negative words and thoughts he didn’t have the time for. Reminding him of his ticking clock to an end. Keith’s end. An end his doubts swore he couldn’t beat. It made it hard to breathe, so Lance retracted his hand from Keith to paw at his chest. Grappled at it, clawing right over where his heart sat pounding underneath his leather armor and his skin, panting into his elbow all the while. He struggled to catch his breath to no avail. Everything felt too close, too suffocating, and the reminder that he didn’t have time to be swarmed by anxiety wasn’t helping his downward spiral, either. 

Concern rattled in Lance’s lungs, his anxiety attack throbbed behind his tear-stung eyes, but he stood on both legs again. His eyes lingered on his husband for only a moment longer (though his vision was too far blurred and gone to truly tell it was Keith, anyway). When he stirred his focus from Keith, his panic slowed. He turned his attention to something he knew he could do: scan the horizon, look for threats. It was something with a pattern; he followed a back and forth path with his gaze. And that was when the negative thoughts in his ears quieted and the thud and slap of what he’d heard before took its place. He could work with through his anxiety, so long as his negativity wasn’t deafening. As long as he could think and breathe and see and hear again. 

Running his tongue nervously over his teeth, Lance tried to locate the sounds’ creator once more. After each crashing noise came more ringing in Lance’s ears, though, and it made hearing like picking the sight of something out in the rain. But, if nothing else, the ringing didn’t carry pessimistic thoughts, so he managed to will himself to push through it. When panic tried to crawl back up his throat, when the reminder of short time crept into the corners of his mind, he sucked in a sharp and cold breath. He took the air in like a frigid shot of caffeine to wake himself up. Shook himself out of his stupor.

The dirt—which had been a pale, cracked brown during the day—had turned inky. He couldn’t make out anything. In fact, he only knew where the horizon sat in his vision because it was a slightly bluer shade of the void black everything else was painted. Though he couldn’t see the source of the noises, he’d determined it was the motion of something alive. Furthermore, based on where the sound was coming from, he had a decent idea of where the creature was and the speed at which it was traveling. Too slow to wait for it to pass. He didn’t have the time to wait for the beast to meander far enough away that he could slip past without alerting it of his presence. 

Clenching a fist with the hand of his unbroken arm, Lance bit his lip. Could he afford to fight the thing head on, either, though? Could he win? He didn’t even know what it was or how large it was—presumably very; its noises were startlingly pounding—and he found himself lacking the confidence to charge at it with fists raised. And he’d depleted so much of his magic trying vainly to heal his husband, he doubted he had much more than one measly spell left in him. And that would be pushing it. Perhaps he could use it to spark a weak fire spell, so he could get a vague, shadowed outline of what the creature was. Because, while it had a gait similar to something Lance had heard in the desert as a child before, it was one of those foggy memories he wasn’t able to pin down and clear up. 

A small fire spell was something he deemed he could manage. One flash, a single second of a fist-sized flame, and he could toss it forward—a distance he knew was shorter than the distance at which the creature sat—in order to illuminate more of the desert. Rocking his head back, he stuttered over an icy breath he sucked in through his nose, before squaring his shoulders and steeling his nerves. Only a second. Only one spell. And then he’d make his decision of how to proceed. Lance huffed a hot breath back out of his mouth. He could do this; it was manageable. 

Stinging trickled down his arm as he summoned the spell he needed. It bloomed in his hand and he immediately threw it forward. By the time the fire splattered on the ground and snuffed out against the dirt, he’d gotten more than enough of a glimpse of his foe. The gravel-shaded beads of its eyes, speckled with orange from the spell’s reflection. Its eyes caught the light in dozens of flecks on its stare, as its eyes were broken up into shapes like the gaze of a fly. Lance had seen its nose, sharpened into the snout of a rat, only an unfathomable amount larger, because it was so much bigger than he’d figured it would be. Four times his height, if not more. Gods, and at least fifteen feet long. He saw its head swivel to face him, alerted by the light he’d cast, and his heart shot up his throat.

That foggy memory he hadn’t been able to clear up was stark now; he knew exactly what the beast was. 

Years ago, they’d been almost eradicated from the desert. Violent, carnivorous creatures that had made travel from Castle Town to his home village a hellish journey when he was younger. No one had claimed them extinct—evidently, rightfully so—and no one bothered to count what was left of them, but Lance had foolishly expected them to be gone. They weren’t. Clearly, because the stampeding footsteps were very much there. Faster and faster and closer and—Shit! Too damn close. 

He knew he was playing chicken in the dark, counting the seconds until the creature collided with him, but he had no way to tell when to pull back. How much longer until he should sidestep? How fast could it adjust its trajectory and follow him? Was it worth waiting at all, or would it be most advantageous to sprint before it got any closer? 

Considering his proximity to Keith, he opted to dart to the side then, in hopes that any shifting in the creature’s path would guide it farther from his unconscious husband. Swinging a leg out and smelling the sting of the subsequent dirt in his nose, Lance sprinted to the side. The swarm of heavy feet—they’d been wide and covered in something hard, a shell of some sort, when he’d gotten a glimpse of them—followed his movements. So did the lighter sound of a slap he’d heard earlier, and he was finally able to identify it as the aggressive clap of the monster’s tail on the ground, scraping and slamming down to shout out its presence. 

Hard of breath, Lance continued to outrun both the sounds and the beast that came with it, but it remained impossibly dark. He could see his feet pound the ground ahead of him, yet couldn’t see much farther; he had no idea how far he’d gotten from his husband, had no idea how to get back. Something like panic seized his heart and clenched it in a fist. But a moment later, it flitted away from his heart, down his veins, and into his numb, shaking hands, when the sound of another tail slap drew his attention. 

Closer. 

Closer. 

_ Closer. _

Dammit!

His eyes were on the horizon as he slammed his heel into the dirt, giving it as solid a grip as he could, to whirl himself (what he felt was) ninety degrees. The stars in the sky were blurred lines of white until he settled in his new direction. Panic had filled his legs with needles by then, too, no longer clutching only his trembling fists. He could hear the sharp bits of rock kick up and crash into the leather of his boots with every step, and he’d honestly only been able to tell he was running by that sound alone. There came a skid, the tumbling of more jagged pebbles being wedged tightly against each other by a heavy set of feet, and Lance knew the enemy was turning to follow him. 

He pictured its ratlike bone structure, its lined, hardened shell, and felt his chest ache in a way that made him want to empty his stomach. It looked something like an armadillo, but sharper teeth, a heavier-set tail, and those damned fly-like eyes staining his vision long past when they left his line of sight. Glued to the insides of his eyelids when he blinked, and to the indigo sky when he opened his eyes once more. The same way the sun left smears of neon colors in his eyes when he stared at its brightness too long. An infallible nightmare. 

_ Slap! _

Another slam of the creature’s tail left Lance zigzagging like a rabbit who’d seen an arrow lodge itself into the dirt a foot away. A threat hung around his neck like a noose waiting to be tightened. Or maybe the nervous prickle of hairs rising along his nape wasn’t a mental noose, but the breath of his enemy getting far too close. Huffing against the sweat-stained collar of his shirt. His neck filled with numb needles, same as his arms and legs, and he was no longer able to feel anything else. Though the feeling of his hairs standing straight left him, the dread of close proximity clung. He was going to hyperventilate again if he didn’t fucking pick up the pace. He cursed and begged his legs to move. MOVE!

_ SLAP! _

Too close, too close, fucking hell—

Lance twisted his heel into the dust again and whipped another ninety degrees around. He’d gone a half circle, a roundabout path returning to his husband; he’d guided himself the opposite direction he’d wanted. Yet he didn’t have a plan to fix it, he didn’t have a plan at all. His plan was merely to run from the beast he’d pissed off. The mage knew it had to be more than that, knew he had to come up with something more, because his breaths were already heaving—brushing past his lips in a manner far too hasty, far too exhausted, and weighted with a burdened wheeze—and he couldn’t run for much longer. Killing the thing had to be his ultimate goal, but he was, for all intents and purposes, out of magic. Maybe he could manage another brief fire spell for vision, maybe he could squeeze out another drop of magic from the pure desperation in the situation, but that would be it. Might knock him out, too, considering how lightheaded he already was. And he couldn’t pass out before the thing was dead. Or he would be dead in its place.

His panting felt hot against his collarbones as he angled his head down to stare at his pounding feet. The wheezes were warmer than the frigid night air, and the longer he sprinted, the hotter all of his skin felt, the more stark the difference between clammy skin and nighttime chill became. Every pant marked more passage of time, more energy expended without any gain being made. He still didn’t have any plan; his mind had been occupied with the hopelessness of the situation nipping at his heels. And that realization only made more negative thoughts swim between his ears, reminding him of how he couldn’t run much longer. How he was too injured to keep his legs pumping. How he was so exhausted and overworked that if his toe hooked on even one rock, he’d probably crash and crumple onto the dirt, until he was trampled under the feet of the monster behind him. 

The noose he felt hanging around his throat clutched tighter.

It tugged him back by his neck, to a stop, because he heard the scuttling behind him cease. Lance slowed, but his legs still burned and trembled with adrenaline as though they were urging him to sprint longer, despite his stuttering halt. He squinted at the barren desert, hoping to spot the enemy. Had it stopped chasing him? Tuckered out? Decided there were better uses of its time and energy than chasing after a hard-to-catch meal? His lashes fluttered—fatigue was catching up to him—and his nose scrunched in his search of the dark. 

Nothing; he could see nothing. Couldn’t hear shit, either. His own huffing, but nothing else. The rest of the desert was still. He swung his foot behind him, backing away from where he’d last heard the beast, but the instant he placed his boot down, there was a rustle. The shifting of dirt, clacking of jostled pebbles that rung in his ears like the sound was the clinking of shattered glass. His heartbeat, faster and heavier than a second prior, joined that noise against his eardrums. Within ten seconds of it beginning, the crunch of dirt stopped. Lance counted his breaths, didn’t dart yet, because the noise still wasn’t footsteps. It wasn’t a threat until it came towards him. 

Gods, if there was ever an instance that embodied his habit of predicting the worst of things, that thought would have been it. Just as soon as he’d assured himself it wasn’t time to bolt, the crunch hastily encroached on his safe distance. A noise approaching faster than the hammering footfalls had been. The stones were crunching in a nonstop path; there were no breaks like there would be if the creature was walking. It was the sound of a wagon wheel kicking up dust as it rolled, and the recognition of that made Lance’s eyes quit fluttering to spread wide. 

Rolling. That’s how the monster’s speed was as remarkable as it was. It was rolling, curled in upon itself, and moving without the hindrance of having to lift and resettle its feet with each step. Pidge might have explained the improvement as something like reduced friction, or merely applauded the beast’s usage of simple machines to its benefit; Lance thought of her, in hopes that some of her brilliance would fall upon him in that moment. Crack against the backside of his head like a strike of lightning from above, giving him the solution. The way to make it out of the creature’s path before he was crushed. Pidge was smart, a truly gifted strategist; she would have been able to fabricate a solution in time. But in the split second Lance had to ponder, all he could come up with was to  _ run. _

His mouth went parched as he whipped around again to outrun the threat, toes smashing together and making him stumble with the haste of the retreat. But before he even completed the turnaround, he already knew he wasn’t going to make it. 

Halfway through his motion, the beast slammed into his side. He heard a rib crack—maybe more than one—as he was vaulted forward. Luckily, the force of the impact was enough to bring the beast to a stop, or he’d likely have been run over entirely. Flattened like dough under a rolling pin. Every one of his bones would have been crushed, he likely would have punctured a lung or two, and his skull might’ve been smashed like a watermelon under a wagon wheel. Not to say that any of that luck was crossing his mind. His mind was sweltering hot with all the pains he hadn’t been so fortunate to avoid.

His nose had broken against the jagged and unforgiving ground, his already shattered arm had been squashed beneath his torso in a way that burned worse than a fever, and the position was doing his newly fractured rib(s) no favors. Something warm and metallic pooled against his tongue—he knew damn well what it was—and he sputtered it out. Then, grinding his teeth, he tuned out the ringing of his ears and the aggravated pounding along the inner parts of his skull. A battle-ready clarity of mind continued to evade him, however, and he couldn’t bring his brain to full attention. But he tried. Fingers splaying over the ground, he attempted to regain his bearings before his enemy could. 

Lance lifted his chest no more than three inches off the ground, before something took hold of his ankle. He collapsed onto his aching torso once more, spitting up more blood. Blearily, he turned his head over his shoulder to determine what had him in its grasp. Not that he needed to look; he could feel the prod of sharp teeth through his pant leg. And it wasn’t like there was anything other than the monster within range. A fact that was ascertained when he caught hundreds of reflections of the moon in two beady, little rings of ebony bug eyes hovering over his leg. The reflections of the light were snuffed by the monster’s shutting eyes, then the instant after, the prod of teeth sunk fully in. Through the tops of his boots, the fabric of his pants, and deep enough into the meat of his limb that he curled his fingers against the dirt in agony. Stones, working like razors, split the soft skin of his fingertips and wedged up under his nails.

The crunch of the bones in the lower half of his legs almost sent him under. Queasiness lined the walls of his throat. His screams felt almost liquid as they crept up his throat and dribbled past his lips. He spat curses and blood, pounding a fist against the dirt until more rocks burrowed between the layers of his skin. Air wasn’t reaching his lungs; his hands and cheeks prickled with needles from the missing oxygen. Raising his free leg, the brunet bent it at the knee, then sent it flying into the snout of the monster latched on his leg. Lance repeated the motion until he landed a hit in the creature’s eye.

Growling, the beast dug its teeth in tighter. Lance’s forehead slammed against the dirt in answer to the newfound pain. His body was reflexively and forcibly curling in upon itself. Shrinking away from the threat. Scrabbling at the dirt, Lance kicked again. In perfect timing, jaws clenched again. He swore he wasn’t going to have a leg if its grip got any deeper. He figured that would at least mean one less thing for his enemy to grasp, so he didn’t yield in his frantic attacks. 

Another noise came from the violent maw over his leg. Hot air burst past the monster’s nose and swept up Lance’s flesh through the torn openings in his pants. Its hold tightened one last time and, with a swift jerk of its neck, the beast yanked Lance up off the ground. Whipping its head—and Lance’s flailing body—the other direction, it released its jaws in time to launch Lance into the air. He was certain he’d gone at least ten yards. He was left scraping along the dirt another couple yards. 

When he stopped, he was sprawled on his back, blinking up at the tear-blurred stars. All sound was muffled; the same sort of way fog would knock away the clarity of his vision, his bruises and pain and trauma were putting a damper on his sense of sound. Sound came back with static, unsteady, ringing. Then, in an instant, it was solid and unbearably  _ loud. _ His ears rattled with the sound of the creatures vexed roar. But he didn’t flinch. He brought the wrist of one of his hands to his brow, sweeping a trickle of blood he felt dripping towards his eye. Hand slapping back against the dirt, the mage felt every ounce of a fight leak from the wounds freckling his aching body. Lance coughed again, tasted copper in his mouth, and waited for the beast to waddle over and finish him off. It couldn’t be helped. 

The cold of the dirt leeched heat off his form. He shut his eyes. Across the desert, his enemy continued to roar. But he was tired. Sweat and tears and dirt and blood were mixed on his face—on his lips—and he tried to let the mingling tastes lure him into a focus other than the death wedging itself down his throat. Anything other than the noose squeezing his windpipe. If he could only pass out, maybe his death would be painless. He prepared to spend his final moments counting his breaths like sheep to knock himself out.

Unsteady, lip-trembling breath in; shaky, chest-rattling huff back out. 

Lung-burning suck in; pained hack back out. 

The creature began to move closer, kicking the scent of dry dust into the air. Lance tried not to hear its footsteps, each slam a swipe of a guillotine, but his breathing fell apart regardless. His lungs stuttered with a broken, hopeless sob. A silent plea, a broken music box with a mournful melody. His wounds—all the cuts and bruises littered together, the scar across his neck, the fractures in his bones—they  _ had _ to string together like letters into a word. 

A painting with a title of— 

A poem with a pattern of— 

A song with a chorus of—

A book with a final word of—

_ Pain. _

His chest trembled as he smothered a whimper in the bloody hand he brought to his lips. Unsteady, unsteady; he couldn’t count unsteady breaths. He couldn’t pass out in time, darkness wasn’t going to swallow his consciousness in time. He was going to die and he was going to be fully awake to feel every snapping bone, every ripping organ, every, every goddamn shattering hope. Gods, he couldn’t do a damn thing in the end, couldn’t even  _ breathe. _

But, when he turned his ears away from his own broken sounds, he could hear steady breathing anyway. Strained, faint, and wheezing, but steady, and loud, and  _ there. _

Ripping his hand from his mouth, Lance reached his fingers out to the source of the breathing and—

Keith!

His husband’s hand was upside down, Lance likely having landed in the opposite direction, but the mage found his fingers grappling for Keith’s nonetheless. For the familiar loop of gold winding around his ringfinger. For the feverish heat that seeped into the metal from Keith’s burning skin. For the way his heat fought the night chill despite being entirely dwarfed by the dark and by the cold. For the power it sent jolting up Lance’s arm. 

He stretched his fingers further, brushing along the sword that was latched to his husband’s left hip. An idea clambered to the forefront of his thoughts. A strategy. A whiff of victory. Quickly, Lance’s hand retreated to flat across his stomach (where his breathing had finally steadied, though he was too smothered in the focus of a newfound plan to notice it). Rolling over, he sat on his knees and grasped the hilt in his palm. It sounded like silverware across their granite countertops back home as he unsheathed it. It sounded like sparring in the castle. It sounded like the swing of the heavy door in the throne room. 

But in the desert?

It sounded like salvation.

Digging its tip in the dirt, Lance used it as leverage to stand up. In his broken arm, he gathered magic. After clearing his head, he listened for when the beast got close. He heard it get close, felt its body heat, and choked on the stench of its breath. That’s how he knew it was his time to act. An illumination spell sprang from his fingers, bright enough the monster squinted its eyes and rolled its head back with an agonized roar, and Lance withdrew Keith’s blade from the dust. Cutting through the side of its mouth, into the jaws of what he’d have called death, he twisted the blade and jammed it up through the roof of the creature’s mouth. Straight to the brain, centered between its nightmarish eyes, and right to the critical weakness. It wasn’t armored on the vulnerable ridges of its mouth. 

Vulnerable, he mused.

The tables had turned for only an instant, that one second of an open mouth, but a second was all he’d needed to utilize that.

Vulnerable, the creature had become. Satisfyingly so.

Warmth swelled around his wrist, wet and dripping, and a second or so after the liquid pooled in the creases of his skin, the beast swayed to the side and collapsed. The blood lubricated his grip on the blade and it slipped from his grasp, falling while still wedged where it’d been stabbed. Falling to his knees, weary, Lance left it there. He caught himself on his hands, blinked, and let himself cry. Adrenaline seeped from his bloody, wailing mouth, down the teartracks from his watery eyes, and exhaustion found a familiar spot in his gut. Passing out was suddenly an option again. 

There was blood on his lips, scarring his tongue with the taste. It was soaked so deep into the skin on his palms, he was certain his flesh would be stained a blushing red, even if he scrubbed it vigorously. In the air, there was a stench of defecation, the emptied bowels of his fallen foe. The vile smell of piss burned his eyes and nose as its bladder emptied, too. But his tears came fast enough to rinse it out. 

_ Too tired to care. _

Lance readjusted his position so he could lay down. Cold started to crawl to the forefront of his senses, since fear was no longer hot, boiling, in his veins. It was a tickle at the roots of his thoughts, but now his main focus was how tired he felt. The lightheaded, hungry, thirsty, overworked kind of tired. His skull felt detached from the rest of him, like his consciousness and his thoughts were something separate from his collapsed body. He felt like he did when he pulled all-nighters—which he was doing, though more as a result of bad luck than by poor choices on his part—or how he felt when he skipped a meal to keep working on a project. Maybe he needed to eat, to sleep, or to drink the suggested amount of water. Maybe that was what his brain was lightheaded over. But his hands and arms were all sharp needles and buzzing, so he couldn’t picture shifting even a finger to get the cork off of his water. 

So, he watched the stars and caught his breath, dimly aware of the urgency of getting Keith to safety, but too drained to fully comprehend. His brain was foggy, scattered, a mist that couldn’t truly digest importance. Like when you first wake up from a dream and aren’t yet completely capable of understanding the fact that it was a dream. He hadn’t woken fully up, pieced his brain together again, and he couldn’t feel the urgency pumping in his blood, like he’d been able to do while in a panic earlier. 

Disconnected, he blinked at a group of clouds that had been smothering the moonlight, right as they peeled away. He traced the newfound light to where it collected in pale pools on the higher patches of the uneven ground. It reflected up and highlighted a puff of dust rolling in the wind. Made him feel dry, parched. Tiredly, he licked his lips, thinking of his water. Still couldn’t imagine lifting a finger, though. 

His gaze trailed up to the sky again, but didn’t stay long. He shut his eyelids to better listen to the rustle of leafless bushes in the unsteady breeze. Rocks hopped in the faint wind, too, making quiet clacks. The crickets returned, since the desert had stilled again, and hearing them made Lance miss home. Not his desert home, but his Castle Town home. Nighttime creatures made him think of the fireflies he couldn’t find out in the desert, the ones he’d stare at through his bedroom window. Yellow blips. Low hanging stars.

He opened his eyes again to look at the stars, the real ones that were blurry in his sleepy gaze. He gulped. His swallow was too loud in his head, but nothing in the desert stopped at the sound. It made him feel small. Lance balled his hands, brought one fist to smear blood under his nose, and then let it fall across his chest.  _ Small, _ he thought.  _ Too small to make it. _

The desert got infinitely colder, seemed infinitely emptier, in that instant. The ache in his chest—one not due to any physical injury, but rather the mental wounds his physical ones tore open—felt deeper. Once more, the urge to go to sleep crept into his head, pounding like a migraine between his eyes. Nonetheless, he knew his desire to sleep wouldn’t come to fruition; his head was still in overdrive. He was hypersensitive to every sound around him. Every gust of cold, suffocatingly dirty air. Every one of Keith’s uneasy breaths. Every dying, stenching sound from the creature beginning to rot at his side. His nerves shot up with each new noise.

He couldn’t pass out like that. Only half wanted to, to be honest, but the lure of an hour or two of peace was tough to outrun. Not that it mattered. Sleeping was out of reach; so was continuing to travel. It all began to make him feel like dying was all he had left. 

So, when he heard footsteps, though his anxiety shot through the roof, he didn’t do anything more than shift his eyes to where he heard it approaching. Keith’s warmth was close. For once, he wished it wasn’t. Because if Keith wasn’t close, then the footsteps that stopped at Lance’s side wouldn’t be within his husband’s proximity, too. Hopelessness was too far burrowed in his chest to do anything to fight back, even though he knew it was probably an enemy. Ezor back for revenge, maybe. Or maybe someone new on their long list of unwanted, unplanned, and undeserved enemies. Lance’s gaze drifted to their silhouette. A dull, drab stare. Tired, blank eyes. 

The doubt of the new arrival being an enemy seized his mind quickly, when the shadow bent at the knee to get a closer look. Lance couldn’t make out any features. They stared for a couple seconds at him, head swivelling to take in his whole broken, dishevelled state. Then, they turned their head over their shoulder, to the creature Lance had taken down, and reached a hand out to follow their gaze. A squelch made something vile turn in the mage’s stomach, as the stranger withdrew Keith’s sword from where it stopped the monster’s bloodspill. Standing slowly, the figure walked around Lance and kneeled next to Keith.

A surge of fragile protectiveness landed on Lance’s chest and pushed pleas from his lungs.

“Please, don’t—” he coughed, more blood sputtering past his lips. “He’s sick, don’t hurt him.” It was weak, not capable of being the threat Lance would have needed to actually stop the stranger. The stranger swung their head over their shoulder again, this time turning back to Lance. They watched him a moment, then faced Keith once more. Lance heard them slide his husband’s sword back into its sheath, then watched them stand. Their back was to him, face to the moon, and their hair was highlighted a pale, raindrop blue in its glow. Lance assumed them a woman, by the length of their straightened hair—to their chin—and the feminine sweep of their shoulders. 

“I wasn’t planning on hurting him,” they said, and something about their voice was feminine enough to give Lance more confidence in his assumption. “Honestly,” she murmured, “you’re faring no better.” She turned halfway, the mage saw her profile against the starlight, and he watched her open and close her mouth a few times. In thought. As if processing confusion, or wariness, or unease. But the brightness of staring at the half of the moon she couldn’t cover made Lance more ill than he’d been before, so he turned his gaze elsewhere. His eyes tugged closed on their own accord. He heard the woman kneel again. Barely, since his hearing began to muffle as it had done before. Words became empty buzzes. “Almost made it to help, huh?” The sentence was wasted on his fading mind. However, her voice registered as melancholy, and Lance hummed sadly in agreement with the tone he’d gathered. 

“Help,” he repeated, picking out individual words of what he’d heard. The moonlight on his clenched eyelids still felt too bright. Sound seemed too far. Thought was slipping. Nose wrinkling, he murmured more. “Help.” A breath, too uneasy to be a sigh, then more garbled speaking. This time, though, it was hard to make any of it out. Lance began to drown in the wordlessness, the fatigue. 

Lance felt a piece of his resolve crumble away inside him. His chest burned with disappointment, his heart as weak as ashes. And though he’d beaten his latest enemy, he nonetheless could taste defeat on his tongue. Heard it ringing in his ears, felt it drumming in his fingertips with his beating heart. A sensation that he’d  _ failed. _ As consciousness began to stumble away from his grip, he supposed he  _ had _ failed. Because Keith was dying. That was what failure looked like. 

Wincing, Lance clenched a fist—his left—and sputtered another splash of blood past his lips. He wound his thumb up over his wedding ring, burning with an urge to tear it off. Lance, the man who’d allowed his husband to reach such a grievous condition, didn’t  _ deserve _ that ring. His thumbnail fumbled across it, pleading for enough of a grip to wedge it off. It stayed put. Despair dug its roots deeper in his chest. Slowly, his eyes welled and overflowed. 

His efforts weren’t enough.

_ He _ wasn’t enough.

The pressure between his eyes and on his heart finally pushed him over the edge of fainting, and as it did, he turned his bloodstained lips to the woman in the moonlight to beg one last time for help.

“Please,” he slurred. “Help him.”

Unconsciousness swung its final sucker punch. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if u kept a counter of how many times Lance cried, comment it down below lmao :) (and even if u didn't, feel free to comment ;) like how have y'all BEEN without me? .u.)
> 
> also leave kudos or you're gonna have to start a "Claire cries" counter, too (ya bullies... jk)
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading!


	10. Eyes Too Bloody to See What Matters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bruh this chapter is a SOMETHING that's for damn sure (ps yeah my chap title was inspired by a billy joel lyric, mind ya business)  
> OK BUT LIKE IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!! IT'S GOOD NEWS, DO NOT FEAR, FRENS  
> So, I wanna try to post on my tumblr more, but it's hard because none of what I post over there gets as much attention as what I post here (mainly cuz I can't post 150,000 word fics on tumblr like..... yikers) ;-;  
> After I finish this fic, I wanna write drabbles and stuff that my followers request, but I cannot do that unless I have, well, followers! So here's the dealio my dudes:  
> y'all should follow me on [my tumblr](https://cakepopple.tumblr.com/) and you should fill my inbox with drabble requests :-) not full length things like this fic, but short little prompts! As long as I'm comfy with them, and they're not super long, I will absolutely write them!! When I'm done with this fic, I'm going to reblog some of those numbered writing prompt things and y'all can send me numbers!! It doesn't necessarily have to be klance or vld either; I have other shows and games and movies and ships I'd ADORE writing stuff for, too!  
> I know that was a lot, but I felt like I should put that out there, since like I ain't charging for requests or anything... so y'all could totally just....... get lit drabbles....... for free....... as long as u follow me and stuff..... thats the tea.....  
> now enough of my shameless promoting!! Here's the chapter y'all have been waiting for :')

The world was silent when Lance clambered back to consciousness. No, it wasn’t truly silent, but his interpretation of it was muffled and scattered by the shadow of deep, tragic sleep over his mind. He fluttered back and forth between awake and asleep on a handful of occasions, grasping more of his surroundings each time he did. 

“Keith,” he’d gasped when he first came to. He did not feel his husband’s heat next to him, nor did he hear his husband’s breathing nearby, so he scanned the reaches of his vision frantically. As he did, he observed the plain ceiling above him, how dark it seemed, and the brightness of the single lamp hanging from it by comparison. It quickly became overwhelming. Wincing, he squeezed his eyes closed to block the light, and swiftly fell back asleep. Another breath of Keith’s name rolled off his lips as he faded.

The next time he awoke, he did so quietly. Keith wasn’t at the tip of his tongue. His mind was moving too slowly for that. Blearily, Lance found the walls around him, painted in smooth strokes of cream and lined with a silvery grey towards the floor. He noticed the funnel of the lamp overhead, which he could dimly recall from his last bout of sight, had painted those walls golden to combat the darkness in the room. Lance swung his head to the side, hoping to find a window with which to spot the time of day, the reason for the darkness, but the movement made him dizzy. He passed out again.

Finally, the third time he woke up, he was able to spot people walking past between blinks. Sways of the ends of nightgowns and pants around thighs and ankles, the wide strides of people scuttling about, and the frantic hands of people in fear. They were flurries of concern. Lance saw them all from an angle at about the height of their hips (the height of a bed, which he could feel gentle and plush beneath his flattened spine) and, unable to reach their faces with his line of vision, he remained unaware as to who they were. With a hoarse throat, he murmured a vague noise to gather their attention and drag them to his side. All at once, the movements in the room stopped, then hastily moved to him. 

His brain remained clogged, and the mage strained to grasp comprehension in the surge of comments directed at him. Just that quickly, all the sounds of the room crashing against his eardrums were smothering. Overwhelmed, he grunted again, weaker than before. He twitched his fingers towards the people crowding his bedside and they silenced in pity of his helplessness. The room fell silent, entirely void of conversation, and Lance was finally able to clear the echoing that had dug into his mind. 

After that, he could hear the sounds as more than muffled, muddled buzzing. He heard the heavy sheets of rain on the roof, a constant static that made Lance feel like his hearing was still compromised. The breaths, shaky and quiet, of the nervous people around his bed. The whipping wind and an occasional snap of a tree branch against the outside of the building he occupied. The rattling of cabinet doors and furniture when a clash of thunder cracked the low level of sound into two parts. 

Cheek still pressed to the bed, he could only hear it all with one ear, and he could only see the faceless bodies of the people around him. That said, he recognized the knuckles of his mother as she wrung them over her stomach, he saw the wire frames of Veronica’s glasses bending in the hands of another figure, he identified Rachel’s soft, manicured nails. _Home._ He lifted his cheek from the bed to ascertain his assumption. As he’d thought, the room held his mother with furrowed brows, his sisters with gnawed lips, and his father gripping the wood at the foot of his bed. Other family members were scattered about, equally nervous. Definitely home; one mystery cleared. 

“How did I get here?” The brunet’s voice was a croak, at best. It seemed unsurprising as he considered the fact that, last he remembered, he was hacking up blood and huffing dusty air. His lungs and throat hadn’t stopped feeling scrambled upon reawakening. And it wasn’t only his physical body in shambles; his mind was tattered, too. Everything he could remember was fuzzy, missing pieces. The pain was easily recalled, the beady eyes of his foe were, too. But most of everything else was eluding him, an inch or so past his grasping fingertips. Sniffing and smelling the remnants of dirt burning his nose, Lance forced himself to think harder. In an instant, all his memories rushed down his throat and filled his lungs. “Keith,” he wheezed, recalling the most important fact of all. “Where’s Keith—”

Lance’s mother rushed closer before anyone else, her hand smoothing against Lance’s forehead as the brunet tried to launch himself out of bed. Another one of her palms pressed on his shoulder to keep him down. Tears smeared his cheeks, panic clutched his chest, and his arms flailed desperately to push her grip away. His lungs seized with hiccuping, wheezing, and broken-off cries of his husband’s name, none of it coherent. The brunet’s tears welled thicker than he could see through, and he flicked his gaze around the room uselessly, catching only the lines of pitying wrinkles on his relatives’ faces. 

“Easy,” his mother cooed. Her eyes were visibly red, wrapped around with tired bruises, and her eyelashes were clumped; she’d been crying. Still, she remained cohesive, and she said, “Keith’s here, mijo.” The tension in his chest eased out, and he sighed, flopping back against the bed. “You should get some rest,” she suggested, gently. Fingers weaving patterns in Lance’s sweat-soaked hairline, the woman sat herself on the edge of his bed—cot; the creak of springs told him it was from the medical building—and suspiciously, the rest of the room’s occupants vacated the area. Dread knotted between Lance’s lungs and between his brows.

_Bad news,_ his brain provided, like a curse. A blistering bruise in his skull. _The room only empties when it’s bad news._

Preemptively, the mage licked his lips and cleared his raw throat. “What’s wrong with Keith?” A guess. It was only a guess. The bad news could be anything, he swore to himself. There was no assurance it was Keith; he could be fine, in perfect condition, wandering the town like a tourist in wait for Lance to fumble to consciousness. He was fine. His fingers would wrap around the doorframe any minute, his head would poke in a second later. It wasn’t Keith. The bad news wasn’t Keith—it could be _anything._

But his mother ducked her head, pinched a clump of her hair between her thumb and forefinger, and she tucked it behind her ear. Nervously. _No,_ his heart wailed, and it whirred into overdrive, thumping against his clenched lungs. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe. “Whatever is in his bloodstream, the poison,” _venom,_ Lance’s brain provided callously, “we can’t—we can’t get it out, mijo.” No air. Where had it gone? The brunet’s lips clambered for a mouthful, but as they parted, only a sob broke free. After compressing her bottom lip under a tight bite, his mother added, “Veronica, by some luck, managed to slow the spread with an old spell she found in the basement, but—”

“Stop,” Lance eked, “I can’t take it. Don’t tell me. I—” a squeak and a whimper fractured his sentence. “I…” Even when nothing smothered his thoughts, it didn’t matter; he couldn’t form words either way. He was out of things to say, out of _time_ to think of anything more to spit out. So, curling two fists, Lance pressed the heels of his palms to his eye sockets. He wailed, unabashed, and the rain pounding the roof sounded quieter as he did. Like it parted for his grieving, gave him center stage for a few minutes to empty his eyes, his _soul,_ into the otherwise hushed medical room. 

“Alright,” his mother said. “I’ll tell you later. Someone brought you both back here after you got injured, but they ran off after you both were admitted here. So, if you’re up to it later, maybe you could help us identify who that stranger was.” Lance snuffed and nodded, certain he couldn’t do what she asked, since he hadn’t recognized the stranger before. But he took the time his mother had offered, and he used it to drain his frustration through tears.

His cries painted the skin of his mother’s forehead, in the colors of wrinkles, as she pinched her brows. Those pitiful sounds he couldn’t stop caked the flickering lamp overhead, dusting over the yellow light it cast, and everything seemed dimmer. The shadows of furniture against the wall, the shadows of the bars at the base of his bed on the floor, the shadow of his mother’s trembling shoulders cast against his lap, looked all-consuming. Lance wished they’d swallow him. He _wanted_ to drown this time. He wanted to be back in the river, water heavy in his lungs, and he wanted to feel the last of his pulse fade from his fingertips. Gods, in that instant, he didn’t want to live any longer. 

He didn’t want to watch his husband die.

Slow, and painful, he’d have to watch him die.

He couldn’t; Lance couldn’t handle it. The mere thought had him cracking under the pressure. 

He wanted to die first. It was selfish, maybe, but he couldn’t watch Keith die. The knight wasn’t even thirty, hadn’t yet gained any wrinkles other than the ones by his eyes from smiling too much. Smiling more after Lance came into his life. Lance thought about that, about the happiness he felt bloom in his chest at the thought of making Keith’s life _better,_ and he tasted bitter and sweet on his lips. He’d made his husband’s life better once, but in the desert, he’d done nothing but rip life from Keith’s fingers. It was all his fault. All of it. If he was stronger, smarter, _better,_ if he’d gotten home _sooner,_ he might have been able to do something. But he hadn’t. The blame fell solely on _his_ shoulders.

_My fault, my fault, my fault,_ his heart hammered and chanted against his chest. A godsforsaken mantra. Sniveling, he begrudgingly noticed all his wounds were healed. More than he could say for his husband. He felt queasy at the concept, a migraine pulsing hard behind his eyes, strong enough to make his stomach roll. His sobbing descended into jagged breathing, his tears ran dry. Parched lips emitted no sound, fingertips rough with dehydration tugged down his cheeks, and his nose gave one last sniff, before he sat upright. There was no protest from his mother this time. 

Nestling himself against the headboard and dragging the bedspread over the legs he’d bent to his chest, he shook his head at the comforting hand his mother offered towards the faint, drained flush of his cheeks. She understood his denial, drawing her fingers away to rest them around one of his ankles. He curled his toes at the contact, so her fingers slipped further still. They landed in her lap with no complaints from Lance, and slowly, she got the message. Sighing through her nose, the woman got up, pressed a kiss to Lance’s forehead, and shuffled out the door.

Lance had thought the solitude would be better, but the guilt in his chest swiftly became unbearable once he was without anyone to help fight it off. Burying his nose between his knees, the mage let the self-blame make a nest in his chest cavity. The ache was something he deserved. For being useless, unreliable, a _failure._ For killing his husband. And there was nothing he could do, he realized, miserably. Not even the best mages in the most magically adept town in Altea had been able to help Keith; surely, any of Lance’s endeavors would be useless. His village had the highest quality tomes around, the best training programs, so if _they_ couldn’t solve anything, it was hopeless. 

Unless… 

Quickly, the brunet’s eyes flickered open, batting only once at the unbearable brightness of the lamp. Medical mages would never use _every_ tool in their repertoire. No, there were certain things that remained silently taboo. They wouldn’t have used them, not with the risk of being ostracized after the fact, and certainly not with the risk of personal harm. But Lance… it wasn’t as though he’d lose any customers for doing it, for breaking the unspoken rule. And he was far past the point of caring about his own wellbeing. Keith’s health was his priority; he owed him that much. 

He knew what he needed to do.

_Dark magic._

That was all there was left. He’d trade his own good health for Keith’s. The doctors wouldn’t have attempted it; it was his only chance at finding a surprise solution. Hope simmered in his chest, warm and promising, until it dripped into every one of his limbs, and he felt the sudden need to move. Swinging his legs over the edge of his cot, he quickly padded his bare feet to the door he’d seen his mother leave through. He could think of a few places in town there might be dark magic spells, he only had to make it outside. But he’d have to hurry. Too long, and someone would visit his room and find him gone, and the ruse would be up. He had a moment to check on Keith, but then he’d have to get to work.

As he got closer to the door, he heard voices and slowed to a cautious halt. From around the doorframe, where a hallway wound in circles to and from each of the rooms in the circular medical building, his niece and nephew came sprinting. They skidded to a halt, hands clinging to the wall, when they spotted Lance two or three strides from the doorway. 

“Uncle Lance,” Nadia murmured. Her hair was wet and dripping down her forehead, lips, and cheeks from the rain, and, when her eyes welled with tears, Lance almost couldn’t tell the difference. But it was made obvious by her weak, grateful smile. She rushed forward, Silvio hot on her heels, and they both tumbled into Lance’s stomach in a sloppy hug. They wailed against him for a moment, before Lance let himself crumple to his knees, so he could hold them against his chest. “We were worried. You came back and you were hurt so bad, I—we—” He felt the little girl’s nose stuff deeper into his neck, and his heart shuddered at the humidity of her sobbing breaths against his skin. 

Eyelashes fluttering, Lance pressed his lips to her scalp. Her hair soaked his skin, and his tears soaked hers. “I’m sorry, Nadia,” he croaked. She cried out again, and the brunet lifted his arms around both of the kids’ backs, hands knotting their shirts. “I’m sorry, Silvio.” Gently, Lance placed a kiss on his head, too. Around his own spine, he felt two pairs of arms tighten, and it made him forget about the ache in his knees from kneeling so long. “I promise, I won’t put you two through that again.” Throat constricting and stinging from more tears, he repeated, “I promise.”

Silvio nudged his head up from leaning on Lance’s collarbones. Suddenly, Lance was struck with a strong urge to guess Silvio’s age as much older than the boy truly was; he looked weathered and distraught, like a dying man. “Aunt Veronica says Uncle Keith might not wake up,” he whimpered. Lance’s body shuddered, his breathing hitched, and his fists at the backs of the kids’ shirts collapsed and fell by his sides. Pain was in Silvio’s hunched shoulders and on his wobbling gaze, seemingly torn further apart by Lance’s broken reaction. Voice quieter, shakier, he asked, “Is that true, Uncle Lance?” With trembling lips, the brunet tried to think of an answer, but his lungs only gave a faint squeak, and then a whine as his eyes started to fill with more saltwater. He ducked his head momentarily, sinking teeth into his bottom lip to hold back a sob.

Lifting his head, he smiled sadly, then swept back and forth between his niece’s and his nephew’s pleading eyes. “Of course not,” he lied, voice too hushed for it to be believable by anyone who wasn’t distraught with a need for reassurance. “I would never let that happen.” He raised a hand to ruffle Silvio’s hair. “The queen would probably have me executed if I let that happen, and we can’t have that, can we?” His nephew swiped his wrist messily under his runny nose and shook his head. “Exactly,” Lance breathed with a bigger, faker smile. “Now tell me, where is that pesky Uncle Keith? Next door?” Nadia nodded from where she’d resettled her face in his neck. Lance pushed her back easily, and her grip on his shirt withered with equal ease. Silvio caught on, and he stood up, too. “I’m going to check on him, alright? Keep it secret, though, or Aunt Veronica might yell at me for visiting, okay?” A simple lie, enough to keep the kids quiet, but not making his plans of dark magic well known quite yet. He couldn’t afford to have anyone stop him. 

The children bobbed their heads in agreement, then Nadia scuttled up Lance’s bed to smother her face in the sheets. Tucking his pillow under her nose, she whispered, “smells like your shampoo.” Lance’s stomach melted, and his smile stretched sincere. He moved to stand as he thought. She must have been truly worried, if she was so desperate. His niece and nephew both probably were, considering the way Silvio took hold of the other end of the pillow to follow her example. His cheeks rose in a similar smile at the familiar scent. They missed him, cared for him, despite having been so young when he first left the village. How lucky he was.

But… 

A frown stole his countenance. 

And they’d miss him _again_ after this, after he cast the spell, because he’d have to leave the village. He wouldn’t be able to stay after he’d used dark magic; he’d probably be cast aside as a disgrace. And it wouldn’t be a permanent solution to the poison, so he’d have to take Keith and go to someone who could actually help. It was delaying the inevitable. Lance would be abandoning those kids—who’d been ecstatic to get him back—for something that might not even work. 

Sick to his stomach, Lance felt like an ass. He whirled to leave the room. He just kept fucking up, didn’t he? Keith got hurt because of him, and his niece and nephew were going to be hurt because of him, too. His whole family would fall apart. He was about to betray the trust of his family and his village to—temporarily—fix Keith, but with the nature of dark magic, there was a chance he’d merely doom himself to join his husband in death. In short, his only possible solution was likely to make it all worse. But it was his only option. It was that, or he was going to lose Keith with complete certainty. The latter was definitely not something he was willing to let happen, so he’d have to risk the dark magic.

He hobbled out of his room, unsteady from grief. His hand dragged along the wall, like he was walking for the first time, and his head spun when he stepped too fast. The pounding in his forehead told him he was still dehydrated, something healing spells couldn’t fix. Lance kept his eyes trained downward because the world began to spin and sway when he didn’t, and his stomach flipped and got nauseous when he tried to look up.

Eventually, his palm hit a doorknob, and he leaned all his weight against it, until it swished down. The door opened and smacked against the wall, while Lance lost his balance and tumbled into the room. He toppled right into a dresser, making the whole thing rattle and causing the lamp atop it to rock into the wall, then he fell backwards. Hissing, he rubbed his scalp where it had hit the tiled floor. Slowly, he righted himself, going from sitting, to kneeling, to standing on both unsteady legs. Only then did he spare the room much attention,

For the most part, it mirrored the room he’d been in earlier. The same drab walls and furniture, the same metal-framed, creaky bed, and the same stench of hopelessness sinking thickly in the air. He waded through that aura of irreparable pessimism to make it to the bed. Sure enough, Keith was placed atop it, blanket tucked taut under his sides. The knight was devoid of all his previous injuries, save one; the venom still scrawled white up his shoulder. It clung a little ways up his neck, only to the base of it, and because his husband had been stripped of his armor, Lance could see its markings were slightly lower and wider on his chest than before, too. 

Faintly, the mage trailed towards his husband. He sat on the edge of the bed, feeling horribly out of place, as he brushed his fingertips over Keith’s hairline. It didn’t feel sensible: him, in nearly perfect condition, watching Keith sleep, frozen between life and death. The whole scenario felt backwards, dizzying, _wrong._ But it wasn’t. It was real; it was tangible in the fever he noticed beneath his flitting fingers. 

Keith’s hair wasn’t in a ponytail anymore, and it looked like Nadia and Silvio had brushed through it and braided some of it. They’d probably missed Keith just as much as they’d missed Lance. Lance unwound the braids on one side of Keith’s head, his bottom lip wobbling, and he redid the braid. His hands shook, but it went along without a hitch. 

Finishing one braid, he moved on to another, as he greeted his unconscious husband. “Hey.” Keith said nothing, obviously, but the stark silence in answer hit deep in Lance’s chest, anyway. The top of his throat burned. Squeezing his vision and tears away, his braiding wavered. “I’m sorry, honey,” he whispered, the pet name feeling awkward but necessary on his tongue. “I’m sorry this happened, and…” as though choking, he swallowed, “I’m sorry for what I’m going to do. I know you wouldn’t want this, I just—I don’t see any other way, Keith.” His voice cracked, then deteriorated, and his fingers fell away from Keith’s hair. He was done with his braids; he didn’t care about the distraction it allowed any longer. 

All his strength fell away at once, and he immediately began to blubber. Loud, hot tears tumbled from his eyes, and he smothered a cry behind his hand. His head thunked against Keith’s chest shortly after. He buried his nose between the knight’s collarbones, tangling his own hands in the sheet pulled up over Keith’s stomach. For a while, he pressed his lips close to the skin so his sounds were muffled, but there came a time when he gave up on that, and he pulled away. Throat having been cried raw, none of his noises were strikingly loud, so he was certain not even the kids a room over could hear.

“I’m so sorry,” he gurgled, “I’m so fucking sorry.” He clenched the sheets so tightly, he tore through them and certainly into his flesh. His chest stuttered and his breathing kept hitching. His muscles burned with the shaking and the constant hunching over his husband, twisted halfway around like a forming knot. “I’m awful, I’m so goddamn sorry.” Lance could feel his heart fluttering anxiously in his chest, faster than a hummingbird, and his breaths were coming out hard and uneven to a similarly hasty rhythm. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he murmured.

The rain that had previously been quiet rose in a sudden and overwhelming crescendo. Lance used the added noise of it crashing against the rooftop to sob harder without fear of being heard. He was miserable. It had been a while of crying since he’d lost feeling in his lips and in his hands. When he brushed his nose against Keith’s chest, he could tell he’d utterly soaked the skin. He’d been crying so long. He didn’t care; he _hurt._ Everything was unbearable. 

There was a tangle in his chest and a pit in his stomach, as well as a burning desire to rip his hands through his hair and to tear his nails down the soft flesh over his wrists. His eyes were wrenched shut, but he was increasingly aware that he was likely painting the cloth he was holding with blood from his jagged, rough grip. He couldn’t feel it, he couldn’t see it, but somehow he knew. And he felt like he deserved it, the pain, the blood.

He heard voices in his head, mainly his own that echoed what he was speaking (I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry) in an excruciatingly aggressive loop. The other voices were of Keith, and of his mother, and of the queen, and of his friends, all saying what he feared they’d say. Telling him he had a habit of fucking up too much, telling him he’d hurt too many people, telling him everything was _his fault._  

His ears rang with rain, his brain quickly overflowed with distress, and the air of hopelessness he’d noticed in the room as he’d entered began to swarm him. “It’s all my fault, Keith, I—I’m so sorry. I wish I was better, I wish I was stronger, I wish I was _enough,_ but I’m so fucking useless,” he rambled and garbled against his husband’s chest. The tears he’d cried smeared over his lips, but that didn’t deter him from making more. He bawled and bawled, nose and throat and lungs shredded from the strain of it. The darkness and deplorable aura in the room blanketed him.

Then the space flashed white and, maybe three seconds later, thunder cracked, and he sat up in a flurry. Heartbeat pounding in surprise, Lance scanned the room with confusion and fear worked into his posture. Slowly, comprehension trickled into his mind; his face lolled back to something pitiful and heartbroken. But he could no longer bring himself to crumple against Keith now that he’d startled away. He’d been jerked to his initial mindset and primary goal, reminded of how he needed to get to where the dark magic tomes were kept, before someone figured out his intentions and stopped him. So, he unhooked his fingers from the bedspread and swiped his snot and tears from his face. 

He cautiously stepped off the bed, padding backwards to the door. His eyes were locked on Keith, apologetic and pleading, until he passed the threshold. After that, he spun around and made a break for the exit of the medical building. Sprinting through the winding hall, bare footsteps loud and not unlike the rain clapping the roof, he hoped no one would cross paths with him, or his intentions would easily become clear. Anyone who found out would surely try to stop him. Time was of the essence, as was secrecy. How long until Silvio and Nadia unwittingly ratted him out? How long until he ran into someone? _How long until he fucked up again?_

Shaking his head, he picked up the pace, until he spotted the door. He stumbled to a halt, pressed a palm to the wood, and swung it open. From the doorway, he watched the rain a moment. It was heavy and thick, whole sheets of it splashing up against the cobblestone walkways, and the landscape was the grey of shrouded sunlight. A spray of cloudy water acted as layers upon layers of curtains to his vision. There was mud between the cracks of stones, shoe prints of it across the tops of them, and from the meter or so Lance could see in front of him, he could tell the prints were from the crowds of people he’d had visiting him. Other than those, however, there were no signs of people being, or having been, outside. The coast was clear. So, tugging the back of his tattered shirt up over his head, he darted into the storm.

Truly, not his best idea. There were a couple medical buildings in the village, all within the cobblestone section, and the rain made it hard to identify which he’d come from. Without knowing where he was, finding one of the many locations he could search became impossible. No landmarks were within the couple yards he could make out, so he stuttered to a stop in the middle of the downpour only a few moments after beginning his run. Carefully, he inched forward, one palm outstretched in search of something. The other kept his drenched shirt up over his head, though it was mostly useless by then, anyway. 

His toes felt like ice, having been soaked in the rainwater. The air itself was a sticky sort of warm, and he wiped sweat from his upper lip briefly, before returning his hand in front of himself. It hit a wall of uneven brick as he did, and he winced at the scrapes the motion had left on his knuckles. Nonetheless, he squinted at the building, in hopes of identifying which it was. He had no luck, but he followed the walls and corners of it around, and as he reached the opposite end, he saw another building on the edge of his vision that he recognized. There were metal bars winding around it and three guards parked out front, dutiful, despite the rain. He grinned. 

Sure, he knew there were dark magic spellbooks in his basement and around town, but the _real_ shit was inside there. That building kept source magic in abundance, so Lance was certain any powerful tomes would be kept there for the same reason. Having said that, he wasn’t as confident in his ability to get inside as he was confident of its contents. His eyes were wavering, his breathing was labored, and his head was heavy; saying Lance was at 70% capacity would be a stretch. There was no way he’d be able to sneak past three armed guards, even covered by the rain, like he was. But maybe he wouldn’t have to sneak in at all. No one would expect a direct confrontation, least of all from him. 

He jogged up to the guards. They squinted at him and raised their weapons as he approached, but lowered them when they recognized who he was. One guard even went so far as to take a few tentative steps towards him, too. Wiping rain from his eyes, the guard caught Lance’s shoulder when he fumbled to a stop. Making a show of his panting to trick the trio, Lance wheezed and leaned on his knees, before hacking out a plea for help.

“My husband, Keith, he—something’s wrong, he’s not—there aren’t any doctors in the building, so I ran here! Please, you have to help!” The lie came naturally, as did the panic he laced his voice with, since he truly was on the verge of a meltdown. It seemed his acting fooled all three of the guards, too, since they all stumbled to find a way to assist. “And, and, oh,” he let himself begin to weep openly, wiping the backs of his hands under his eyes to catch the tears. “I think I saw someone from out of town sneaking into the medical building, I don’t think he’s safe. Please, please, I can’t lose him.” Lance watched as one of the guards—the one who’d stepped forward upon Lance’s approach—began to step around him.

“Oh, gods,” he muttered, “I’ll go find a doctor!” Turning to his companions, the man started giving them orders. “You two, handle the intruder. We can’t let the head knight get injured while under our watch.” The two gave uneven, hasty salutes. 

Letting a whimper simmer at the back of his throat, Lance tugged on the sleeve of the guard. “Please,” he begged as the man turned around. The plea got a crisp, dedicated nod, the burden of high stakes making the guard’s gaze wobble. Both of the other two were frantic, as well, beginning to move around Lance like their companion had done, as though they needed all three of them to find a doctor and help. Which would have left the facility they were guarding in great peril, had it been anyone more malicious than Lance deceiving them (if he lived through this, he’d be having a conversation about security with his parents). Not that Lance was complaining about their foolishness; it gave him exactly the opportunity he needed. “Sorry,” he whispered, too quiet for anyone but himself and his twinge of guilt to hear.

As they bared their backs to him, the mage curled his fingers towards their necks, hands jolting an electricity spell barely strong enough to knock them all out. One fell to their knees first, luckily, as it slowed their fall enough to spare them a broken cheekbone against the cobblestone. As for the other two, Lance caught the backs of their shirts in his hands, lowering them to the ground carefully. Deciding to leave them there, the brunet tugged his hair back from where it had glued to his forehead, and darted for the building. His only hope was that it would be a while before the rain let up, so no one would come outside and notice the three unconscious guards in the street. His ruse couldn’t be revealed until he had a spellbook in his palms.

The mud was worse past the fence of metal bars, the remnants of a dirt path into the building having been turned to sop. Lance had never been on this side of the fence, so he’d never seen the intricate carvings on the white building he was approaching. Most were markings he couldn’t recognize, but he saw a couple swirls of the Altean signia around the doorframe. The baseboards outside were splattered with specks of mud, and the ivory shade of its paint was grey because of the drips of rain trailing down against it from the roof. As he palmed the bronze of the doorknob, Lance felt it slick with the same rain, and when it mixed with his nerves, his grip slipped right off. He hissed.

His frustration was on thin ice, his patience was hardly a thread, because he was in a time crunch, and the pressure against his shoulders had been building too long. With Keith unconscious and _dying,_ he was alone. All the weight was on him, no one there to ease some of it off. He thought of Keith’s life, his own, and the entire mission they were on; every bit of that was his responsibility. Gods, their castle had been attacked, and _Lance,_ the tailor from Castle Town, was subsequently defending the entire nation’s security. It was too much weight, too much pressure, too much to pile on top of a man who was already crushed under the idea of losing his husband. 

Lance’s grip fell from the knob when he tried to hold it again. He pounded a fist to the wood in agitation.

Who was after them? What did they want? The serum, probably, and they wanted Lance’s source magic to get it. But _why?_ Yes, the power granted by the substance was formidable, but it only provided advanced senses and maybe some extra muscle mass. Was executing the head knight’s husband really the quickest, easiest method of gaining such strength? Was there no other way? And _why?_ What were they planning to use it for? Were they a leader trying to conquer, a peasant trying to climb up the social classes, a fool out for revenge? _Who?_ The fiends who’d attacked him thus far seemed to be associates of Lotor, but was that really who held the reins of the operation? Dammit, he had too many questions, and his patience snapped like the mere thread it was, whipping apart and leaving him in pain. 

Lance stepped back, spun partway, and rammed his shoulder against the door to bust it open. He’d determined fumbling with his hands and letting his thoughts consume him—the thoughts of the worries and the fear and the confusion and the lack of answers—was getting him nowhere. The door cracked in one go, swinging open quickly, likely a result of his pooling irritation acting as fuel for his muscles. His situation was far past the point of hesitation. Patience was a luxury he didn’t have, hadn’t had for a while. He had been foolish to act compassionately.

This mission would make a pessimist out of him; it seemed as though the world was hell bent on doing so. His mother would be heartbroken to hear it, that his compassion had withered, that his trusting and welcoming nature was in shambles. The bitterness in Lance’s chest told him that if Keith died this mission because he took a shot for Lance, Lance would never trust again. What would his mother think then? 

Just one stroke of luck, he begged. _One._ Let Keith live. And then he might not fall apart. He might not break his mother’s heart, if only he could find a dark magic spellbook and figure it all out; if only he could fix all of it. No, not even all. Keith was all he wanted to save. Mission be damned—Altea could crumble at his feet for all he cared—just _please,_ he thought. Let the world give him Keith. 

That was his plea as he stepped into the echoing, marble chambers. As he stared at its tall—looming—columns dotting either side of its long walkway. There were rows upon rows of little, wooden drawers on the walls, and when Lance wedged the broken door back into place behind him, they glowed in the newfound dark. The cracks between them were shades of twinkling yellow, carnation pinks, and sunny oranges. He padded to one of the boxes, slid it out of its nook in the wall, and scooped up what was inside. 

It was easy to recognize the buzz of magic in his palm. He rolled it side to side, and it pooled as something semi-liquid. The strength of its magic was overpowering, like the smell of a freshly purchased candle, and he pieced together what it was. Source magic. He’d never seen a physical manifestation of it before, let alone _held_ one, and he allowed himself to observe it for a moment. Something he’d only heard about from his mother and older sister, or read about in history books. This particular source was a soft, sunset pink, and warm to the touch. Not hot, merely a bearable—pleasant, even—breath of heat, like the kind he got when he and Keith would hold hands—

Lance hastily shoved it back into its drawer, queasiness prodding his gut. 

But, nonetheless, he stared at it a moment longer. Could he use source magic to heal Keith? Perhaps it would amplify his magical prowess and he could heal what he hadn’t been able to before. His fingers itched towards it once more, but he tugged them away. No. He’d stick with things he at least understood in theory. He’d read books on how dark magic worked, received lessons about it (why it was a bad idea to use it, mostly), so he knew, conceptually, how to use it to help his husband. But source magic? There were no words on pages for him to recite, there was no guide on how to use it, and he’d certainly never been given any lessons on it. He wasn’t going to use it the first time on Keith; no one knew what sorts of rebounds, what sort of _damage,_ raw magic could cause. Not to mention, it was surely illegal enough to get him executed. Lance would never wish to drag his husband into whatever scandal using source magic would create. 

Sighing, Lance carefully popped the drawer back in place. It became a frame of gentle, glowing pink once more. The mage turned on it, delving deeper down the hallway. He found the end, found a fork in which either side had more lines of glowing drawers, and he also found a spiral staircase to a higher level. Lance figured he’d be more likely to find spellbooks up there than in more identical hallways. He steadily made his way around the steps.

When he reached the top, he found exactly what he was looking for. It was an attic of sorts, so the ceiling tapered into a point at the center, and there wasn’t much room as a result. The square window panes at either end of the space cast a dull, grey light into the room; streaks of silver on the dusty, oak floors. He traced the line of brightness up to three of four bookshelves of spellbooks, gloomy sunlight landing on one book’s spine like it was pointing. A shaky finger of a skeleton, tapping its bone over where he needed to look. Like maybe the Goddess of Death was looking out for him. Flashing a wry smile and walking over, he wiggled it out of place. 

It was a hardcover tome, wrapped in a layer of fraying, black fabric. On its front, in gold lettering, it said _healing magic._ On the inside, the fifth page or so, it began to list incantations Lance had never learned, despite specializing in healing spells. The sixth held the same. As did the seventh. He flipped through the whole thing, pages snapping up from under his thumb, and he didn’t recognize anything. There was no way he’d fail to recognize so many regular magic spells; it had to be dark magic. With how easily he found what he was looking for, perhaps his luck was changing. Maybe the Goddess of Death had decided she wanted the day off, decided she didn’t want to take Keith from him yet. Someone up there was giving him a hand.

As Lance looked at the passages in the book more carefully, it became apparent that some of it wasn’t in English, either, which was the language all casual magic tended to be recited in. If the motions were not memorized, that is, as was the case with the spells Lance practiced frequently (healing, electricity, illumination, and seemingly now fire spells, as was his poor luck). Lance fleetingly wondered if it was even possible to use dark magic without reciting the incantations, and he thought back to Ezor to figure out if he’d seen her muttering to herself throughout the battle. If she needed to speak the spells, perhaps that would give him an edge next time they battled. He could—

There was a muted crash downstairs. The snap of the door caving in, muffled by the distance between it and Lance.

Oh, gods. Dammit, dammit, dammit—

And then there were muttered orders of strangers echoing in the lower hallway. Lance heard two or three voices, likely the town’s guards, maybe the next shift of guards meant to stand out front. He held his breath, sprinted behind the bookshelf, and flattened his spine to it, hoping no one would come upstairs, or at least that no one would creep far enough into the attic to see him around the bend of one of the bookshelves. Breath locked itself in Lance’s lungs when he heard clattering footsteps hustling up the staircase. His chest constricted, as though to push the air out in a miserable cry, when the steps came closer. No noise slithered past his hold on it, though. 

The footsteps stopped, however, and someone spoke. “No one is up here, either. We know someone was here, but I think whoever it was already left.” Their voice trailed off as they clambered back down the spiral stairs. Lance released the air he’d been suffocating on, and slowly tiptoed out from behind the shelf. Making his way to one of the windows, the one he knew overlooked the entrance to the building, he squinted at the rain. Through it, he could pick out a circle of guards near the felled door, next to where the soldiers he’d knocked out had been before. He hoped no one was looking back and spotting him, too.

The circle hardly shifted for a minute or two, then a few more guards trailed out of the building, and the whole group scattered like balls on a pool table. They left no one to watch the entrance, likely having (inaccurately) cleared it of the threat, and Lance seized the opening it provided. Quickly shuffling himself down the stairs and through the glowing hallways, he made it to the door. Still no one there. So, he bolted. He tucked the spellbook under the end of his doctor-distributed shirt, and he darted through the rain. It had let up a little while he’d been searching, so he found the medical building faster than he’d left it. Winding past empty patient rooms, he popped a head into each one, until he was eventually met with Keith. 

Lance had gone one further, to see if his niece and nephew were still around (they were; they’d fallen asleep on his cot, tuckered out from their crying). He wasted no more time than that, though, and he tottered into Keith’s room, shutting and locking the door behind him. But then he’d finally stopped running, and he realized how loud it all was. His lungs were wheezing, the rain was unbearable on the roof, the thunder rumbled constantly, and his heartbeat in his chest was louder still. He wanted to cry. 

No time, he reminded himself. The clock was ticking, the guards he’d knocked out would wake up soon, and they’d tell everyone who’d broken into their building. He’d be busted. 

Hands shaking, he peeled his soaked shirt off of the cover of the spellbook and flattened the object next to Keith on the bed. He flipped through the table of contents, looking for any section marked poison or venom. Eventually, he found one, and frantically turned to the pages the list had identified. There were spells for poisons in foods and poisons in the air, for snake bites and spider bites, and for the venom of creatures whose names he couldn’t begin to read. He needed something more vague, something that was merely venom in the bloodstream, and his eyes started to sting when he skimmed his fifth page without luck. _Please,_ there had to be _something._  

And suddenly, he found it. 

_Venom of Any Variety,_  

the page was labelled. And under, in blocky, bolded letters,

**_CAUTION: the personal cost will be greater due to lack of specificity._ **

The warning referred him to an introductory page, but Lance didn’t bother turning back to read it; he didn’t have the time. He did, however, catch a glimpse of the list of rebounds beneath the cautionary statement. On it was the possibility of the venom spreading more quickly in the spellcaster than it had the original victim. Lance hesitated at that, eyes snagging on it like soft fabric on velcro, but ultimately yanked his gaze free. Without a second more of delay, he found the start of the incantation. He spread one palm over the infected area of Keith’s skin. And he began to read.

He’d never used dark magic before; his pronunciation was likely sloppy. So much so, he highly doubted he’d ever get good enough to memorize it like he’d done with other spells. A darker part of his mind told him it might not even matter, since the venom could kill him faster than he could memorize _anything,_ anyway. How long would he have before he succumbed to its effects? Frowning, he forced himself to think it wasn’t worth contemplating; it wasn’t like he _wanted_ to need dark magic often enough to warrant committing it to memory. 

But he stuttered through the spell the one time he needed, and he felt something heavy weigh at his fingertips once he finished. His whole body sagged forward with the tug of it, and he shifted the gentle touch of his hand on Keith’s arm to a firm grip to hold himself upright. He realized it would take his whole focus to succeed. Grunting, he locked his stare onto the receding edge of Keith’s venom scar. The white was retreating to its center quickly, and Lance needed to gauge how much he could take. Keith weighed more than him, had more muscle mass than he did, so he could likely handle more venom before dying. It was possible he had more in him already than Lance could survive through. So, Lance knew he couldn’t take all of the venom; there was no telling what would happen to Keith if Lance died mid-spell. Thus, he only took, what he guessed was, half of the venom. Well, maybe a little more, because Lance reminded himself that, if it came down to it, Lance would prefer that he himself died first. He couldn’t watch Keith get taken by the venom again. He couldn’t.

“Please,” he hacked. “Take whatever you want from me. Anything, you can have it. Just bring him back. Give him back to me.” A warm, salty trail slipped down into his lips.

The stain shrunk to the size of a fist, and Lance figured that was small enough. He looked at the book again to determine what he needed to say to stop the spell. After reciting the few remaining words, the weight on his hands ceased, and he tumbled down against his husband’s chest in exhaustion. His arm and neck ached with the new poison in his veins; he felt so dizzy he thought he’d pass out. Nonetheless, he rolled his head to get a view of Keith’s face. A face that was still fully unconscious. 

Suddenly startled, Lance’s head flew up. He prodded at Keith’s jawline with trembling fingers. His grip trickled up to Keith’s unmoving eyelids, his sleep-taken gaze, and from it came no response. The mage felt stupid, insignificant, and he battled with the incomplete work of his spells. Though Lance was still awake, he remembered that it hadn’t been the same for his husband. Keith had passed out immediately upon being struck with the venom, when it hadn’t yet spread throughout his bloodstream; why would he have stirred when the venom still had so much gained territory? Gods, of course he wouldn’t. Lance had just doomed them both to death for no reason. Sniffing and starting to cry, Lance let himself slip from the bed and onto the floor.

Hoarsely, he whispered, “I’m so fucking stupid. Dammit,” and he pounded his head on the metal frame of the cot. The whole thing rattled and clanged against itself and the tiling on the ground. Keith was going to have to go through the pain of dying all over again, and for absolutely no reason. No gain. Just because of Lance’s _fucking_ stupidity. He slammed his head against the metal another time. If he hit his head—gave himself a concussion—once for every time he’d fucked everything up, maybe he’d atone for some of it. Maybe that would be enough to make up for it. “Keith, I’m so sorry,” he mumbled. Gods, he should have just taken all the venom so he could get it over with and die—

“Lance?” The man in question flung back from the bed at the call of his name. He blinked at the piece of furniture, wiped his tears with his shaky fingers, and traced the outline of his husband sitting half under the covers with his unclear eyes. Keith’s wide shoulders, his unruly hair, his confused and fully conscious face. Lance stared—starstruck—for a moment, and it was in that moment that Keith stepped off the bed. 

Keith effortlessly squatted himself in front of Lance, eyebrows pinched with worry. His fingers moved slowly (so slowly, slower than the spread of a puddle, slower than the drip of honey, and slower than the sun moved from sunrise to sunset in the summer) to Lance’s neck. He probed the side, gently pushing Lance’s head as he examined. Eyebrows furrowing deeper, the knight brushed a calloused thumb over the ring of tainted white Lance had taken. He peeled back the collar of the shirt hiding how far the wound spread, fingers dipping lower to follow every bit of the blight he revealed. If Lance concentrated, he could feel a hole in the middle of the venom he’d received. Keith likely had the venom meant to fill that gap, since Lance had taken only the outer reaches of his infection. Their infections would slot together like puzzle pieces. _Fitting,_ Lance mused. And that hole in Lance’s wound was where Keith’s fingers stopped.

“Lance,” Keith said, more firmly than he’d done upon waking. “What is this?” Lance could tell by the spark in his eyes, the kindling of a glare, that Keith already knew what it was. He wasn’t so incoherent from his recent coma that he’d be unable to remember the attack. “How did you get this?” The glare started to form; Keith’s mouth flattened. In response, Lance turned his head to the side. Keith gently took his chin between his thumb and forefinger, spinning Lance’s gaze back to him. His jaw was tight with demand for an answer, but his eyes were soft with a plea. A plea that he was wrong, that the same venom under his skin wasn’t also under Lance’s. A plea that Lance hadn’t hurt himself for his sake. A plea that it wasn’t true.

A plea Lance couldn’t answer the way Keith wanted.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, and that alone had Keith releasing his chin and standing up. “No one could fix it! You were dying, Keith! I couldn’t let you die when I could help you,” he tapered off. He folded his knees to his chest and dripped tears against them. Nose and mouth stuffed between them, his words came out muffled, “I had to use dark magic.” Keith crumpled back down next to him, head in his hands and eyes curtained by ebony lashes. His legs were folded haphazardly under him, only partially, mostly strewn about him in a mess. “There was no other way, Keith, I _had_ to—”

“You didn’t,” Keith said, softly. His meaning, the knives tucked into his words, however, were loud. “You didn’t have to do anything, Lance. Gods, now you’re going to die. I—I fucking killed you. Gods! Fuck,” Keith panted into his lap, head shifting as he spoke, but face still mostly turned downward and out of sight. There was a tremor working its way up his body, starting in his feet, which he bounced side to side on his ankles. It spread next to his torso, that wracked with heaving breaths, quick like a panic attack. Next, it got his hands, making them jitter where they were knotted in his hairline. “It’ll be all my fault.”

Lance frowned, frustration deep in his features. “How the hell do you think _I_ felt, Keith?” Keith finally lifted his head, eyes meeting Lance’s, and the torrent within them had Lance regretting that he’d wished to see them before. “Keith, I had to fucking watch you dying, while I _knew_ it was my fault! You were literally in a damn coma! I had to drag you through the godsforsaken desert, _knowing._ Knowing you’d have been better off without me—” A guttural noise sounded from Keith’s chest, and Lance watched his husband surge forward. Before Lance could lean back or continue his thought, Keith had his fingers tight on either one of Lance’s cheeks.

Nose wrinkling, he growled, “Lance, don’t you ever fucking say that. There is _nothing_ you could possibly do that would ever make me think I’d be better off without you. It’s just not true.” In his dark eyes, Lance saw tears. Angry, hurt, bitter tears, right at the surface of his hard stare. Yet all at once, the anger fell away, crumbled to shambles, and what was left was pain. Anguish and torture were dripping from his dewy lashes as he spoke, “I wouldn’t be so damn heartbroken at the thought of losing you if I was better off without you.” 

Lance let his sight dip. Let it fall to his lap, where his hands were trembling with open palms. His fingers twitched to clench into fists. An unanswered request. Keith’s fingers were stagnant on Lance’s face, just holding him there, and Lance didn’t doubt that it was to remind his husband that neither of them were dead yet. If he was honest with himself, he needed that touch, too. Gingerly, he took his hands out of his lap and pressed them over Keith’s. Face soft, and weak, and unassuming, and mostly scared, he met Keith’s glare again. The glare that hadn’t drifted away from Lance’s eyes, even as Lance looked down and even as Keith continued to cry. It stayed right there, through everything. 

Brokenly, Lance repeated what he’d said before. “There was nothing else I could do.” His own eyes were dripping and the teardrops smeared as Keith pried his hands away from Lance’s face. He stood, abruptly, and Lance watched helplessly as he began to pace. He circled in a ruthless march around Lance, hands buried and tangled in his hair, and he tugged the loose braids on one side of his head undone. 

“Like _hell_ there was nothing else you could do, Lance!” He squatted against the bed, throwing his head back to watch the ceiling fan. “You were _supposed_ to do nothing! Gods, you weren’t supposed to try to undo the irreversible.” The concern in Keith’s tone was riling up to anger, and he covered his eyes with his hands. He was probably crying harder. His words were sharp when he spoke next. “That was rash and stupid and—and Gods! I don’t know. It was reckless!”

“Reckless,” Lance echoed, an inkling of incredulous judgement in his voice. “I was reckless?” The mage stood up, feet landing heavy like lightning. He pitched forward, angling a finger at Keith, jutting it towards the center of his baffled face. Keith’s face. Audacious Keith, who had the _nerve_ to call _him_ reckless. Slipping his finger a little closer, Lance folded his lips down in a scowl. “You know? I distinctly recall you telling me we _wouldn’t_ keep doing this. We were supposed to stop this stupid, sacrificial game.” Keith was silent, but Lance could hear his search for a response in the way he held his breath. Not giving him a chance to find a comeback before Lance had finished, the mage started the flurry of words again. “So, before you get on me about _my_ recklessness, how about we talk about yours? How quickly you threw that promise away.” 

Something snapped in the room. Something fractured between them. Something slapped against Lance’s heart harder than the thunder pounded against his skull. And whatever that something was, it tore Keith from where he’d sat himself on the bed in a rush. Lance speedily flinched an inch away, forced to do so by the fury in Keith’s eyes. They were narrowed, pupils dilated. “How quickly I—” Keith sounded wildly disbelieving. “What was I supposed to _do,_ Lance?” The man in question stopped his flinching. He straightened his spine in defiance, tried to stand his ground in the argument, met Keith’s hardened eyes. Despite how Keith was standing and Lance was still cross legged on the floor, the latter met his husband’s challenging tone as though he were in a battle stance. “This whole thing is my fault! It’s my serum they want, it’s my goddamn head on the chopping block. So what was I supposed to do? Watch you die because of _me?_ ” He had a face like he’d said the final word; his nose was wrinkled in frustration, but his lips were locked as though he didn’t expect a rebuttal.

Lance pulled the collar of his shirt up over his nose, tucked some of the fabric between his teeth, and screamed into it. His fists shook with how tightly he was clenching the muscles. He lifted them to tug at his hair, streaking through tangled and knotted strands of sun bleached brown. Again, he shouted wordless chants into the fabric. Then, he let it fall from his mouth. “That’s exactly how I felt, Keith!” Quickly, he smeared a soft trail of a tear that had been seeping into the crease where his ear met his jawline. Lance tried to save face. Tried to make his eyes and his scowl as angry with Keith as his words implied they should be. Really, he was infuriated with himself, more than anything else. “You took the venom for _me,_ I felt exactly the same! Why can’t you fucking _try_ to understand that?” 

It was clear Keith was gritting his teeth, grinding his jaw, biting back frustrated words, all by the sound alone. But seeing it was so much worse. The way his cheeks flared red, his eyes flashed, and his maw snapped once with a statement that almost slipped out. Slowly, he evened his tone. “It’s not the same.” Lance threw his hands to the ceiling in frustration. Tears stumbled from his eyes.

“You are being _such_ a hypocrite!” In an instant, Keith’s hands were locked on Lance’s shoulders, and while the contact wasn’t harsh or harmful, it made something painful throb in Lance’s chest regardless. The tremble in Keith’s hands portrayed such raw emotion. Fear, anger, earnesty. More tears dribbled and dripped onto Lance’s collarbones from his chin, falling at an even faster pace. “Don’t pretend for a damn second that you wouldn’t have done the same thing, done the same—same exchange of venom, if you were in my shoes.” Snivelling, Lance batted his lids to knock his tears away and to clear his vision. “Not for a damn second, Keith,” he concluded, voice withering. Keith fell to the ground across from Lance. The hold he had on Lance’s shoulders slipped, sliding down to his biceps, and Lance took note of how the hand over his recently poisoned arm had a gentler grip. Filed it away as a reminder. There was care in Keith’s fury, as there was care in his own. 

If Lance thought, he could only find one instance within his memory in which he’d been truly angry with Keith. Frustrated, sure, that happened all the time—they were both incredibly stubborn people, after all. But sincerely upset? The kind with sharp words, brisk comebacks, ill-thought phrasings, and sinking, regretful stomachaches? Those were rare. Other than this moment, in the hospital room, suffocating in the pounding rain and thunder, there was only one time. It had been back when Keith and Lance were still dating. No more than a year after they’d officially put a title to their outings together. Lance had told Keith he loved him by then, but they hadn’t been together long enough for Keith to say it back (Lance quickly realized that, and he had only said it once). But still, it had been long enough after their first date that Keith had been appointed a knight maybe a week before the incident.

The two had a date planned for the day, and they were supposed to meet at the drawbridge to the castle before leaving. Lance woke up early, too excited to sleep in, and quickly shuffled out of his shop to assure he made it to the bridge perfectly on time. It was rude to show up late; he was determined to avoid giving the impression that he wasn’t downright thrilled at the prospect of spending time with Keith. So, he fumbled to lock his door, before jogging down the cobblestone roads. 

His heels clacked and mixed with the other bustling sounds that were commonplace in the town. Similarly hasty inhabitants, carts drawn by horses, and muted shouts of vendors in the nearby plaza. Lance found he liked the noise when he was in a good mood, like he was at that moment. It brought a smile to his lips and he optimistically thought about all the happy lives and ideas the other noisemakers had. He imagined what each passerby was doing. Why were they rushing? Were they also scrambling to a long awaited date? Were they headed home from a night shift, looking forward to kissing their sleeping kids’ foreheads before tumbling under the covers for an oddly placed bedtime? Lance loved to think about it. The happiness of everyone else was twice as infectious when he himself was already elated for his date.

But even with all his thoughts and all the mindless, joyous drivel around him, Lance picked out a few choice words from an alleyway as he passed it. A few hushed, bitter, dangerous words. He really ought to learn how to leave assholes alone—not every battle was his battle—but it was hard to leave some things be. So, when he heard a conversation in an alley, even before he determined what it was about, he thought it was suspicious. No one chatted mindlessly in an alleyway. Only people who wanted secrecy hid away like that. 

Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was suspicion, but either way, it was a mistake.

Lance’s jog slowed, his face turned openly to the two men in the alley. It was perfectly clear he’d spotted them, and it was perfectly clear he was listening in. He wasn’t truly eavesdropping if he made it obvious he was listening, right? The men hadn’t noticed him yet, though, and they continued to bark back and forth with twisted faces, mouths curled and knotted with hatred. 

“Can you believe it,” one huffed, crossing his arms and knocking his shoulder blades against the brick wall behind him. It wasn’t a question; it was an insult to someone not present. He tilted his head upwards, staring at the overhang of a building overhead, so his scalp bumped the wall, too. His nose wrinkled, he turned his face away from Lance, and there was an exaggerated sound of him spitting. After he faced the sky again, he drew a wrist to his lips and wiped. “It’s fucking disgusting.” The other man grunted in agreement.

Drudging a finger under his nose and snuffing, he slurred. “Honestly.” He tucked his hands back into his pockets, slouching his posture and baring his teeth. “Usually Queen Allura makes coherent decisions,” the other man scoffed to himself, “but not this time, huh?” Lance almost thought it was time to move on. A simple political debate between sketchy dudes, that’s all the situation was. No reason for concern. One of his feet turned towards the castle again, his chin jutting in the direction, too, but then something new prickled his ear. “A fucking _Galran._ She appointed one of those freaks as a knight? Shameful.” The sky-watcher gave a supportive, scornful noise. 

It didn’t even take a second for everything to click together in Lance’s head. A Galran knight? There was only one. They were talking about Keith.

Lance didn’t consider himself all that impulsive; he was typically level headed, and he was usually quick in pro/con analyses of situations. He wasn’t that day, however, and his shoulders were squared and moving towards the men instantly. No thought of personal peril, no consideration of whether snapping at some shitty strangers was really worth it, and no hesitation. Polite words were out the window. 

Clacking one foot loud on the ground to gather the attention of both men, Lance placed a hand on either hip. Not the paragon of tough, but his vexation was apparent. The men turned to him slowly, lazily, and the one who’d been watching the sky spat again. The one with his hands in his pockets gave Lance a head-to-toe swipe of his gaze, then a lopsided smirk. His tongue darted out over his bottom lip, before pulling back to allow him to speak. Lance was faster, words coming sooner to him than the stranger. “You shouldn’t say that,” he slowly said. Steadily. But his insides were bitter with how passive his word choice was. “It’s a little bit xenophobic and shit.” This was _not_ the forum for big words and logical arguments, but he’d claimed his ground, so he’d have to stick with the theme. 

The one who’d given him the sleazy smile narrowed his eyes. “Dunno what that means, long legs.” Lance suddenly felt like his pants were too tight around his calves and thighs. “You got a problem with us wantin’ to keep things right ‘round here?” Sky-watcher pushed off the bricks, and both parts of the duo faced Lance. They were taller than they’d looked from the side. Or maybe just taller because they were closer. Getting closer. Until Sleazy had the toe of his boot touching Lance’s, and his head bent closer to look into darting, blue eyes. A hand went on either of the bastard’s hips, his brows drew to the center of his face. “You can’t trust folks like them, kid. You’re too young and too doe-eyed to have ever fought ‘em in the war. You wouldn’t know.”

“I would,” Lance supplied quickly. Sleazy grinned wider at the hasty rebuttal, like he got a kick out of being challenged. He raised an eyebrow, though, and tilted his head to one side menacingly. Lance licked his lips. “Kei—the new knight is perfectly trustworthy.” The man leaned closer, forehead brushing a sloppy tuft of Lance’s hair. His closeness was answered with a purposeful broadening of the brunet’s shoulders and an intentional straightening of his spine. Lance’s eyes still struggled to meet his foe’s, however, despite his confident facade.

“You know him or something?” It was Sky-watcher who’d replied that time, still a foot or so away, but Lance could hear the other man’s breath rush out. Sleazy was laughing. Stifled, but that was definitely laughter. Clenching and unclenching a fist, Lance winced. “Because that might not be something you wanna admit to us,” the asshole said. By then, Sky-watcher was also creeping closer to Lance’s personal space. There was a meaty hand—Gods, they were both so much bigger than he was—placed on Lance’s shoulder, and a second face leaned in tight. Sucking in a shaky breath, Lance tried to turn his face away. The flesh of his neck felt too warm; every motion of the men had him feeling claustrophobic. They were too close.

He gulped.

“I—” his voice was squeaked, his hands shook like smoke in the wind. “It’s just not right for you to hate someone you don’t even know. Not for something like that. It’s like,” Lance paused, squishing his chin closer to his neck to avoid the breath tainting his cheeks and to cast his gaze farther, farther, _farther_ than where it might meet the eyes of the men in front of him. “That’s just xenophobic, honestly,” he reiterated. It was a big word, one he didn’t truly expect the sketchy bastards to understand, but he hoped to use that to his advantage. He figured if they didn’t know what he meant, they might not have the capacity to snap. How mad could they be if they didn’t know what to be mad at?

Apparently, they could be extremely mad. There was a confused grunt from one of the men, and then hands grasped higher up his shoulders—too close to his neck. “Who the fuck do you think you are to call us anything? You think you’re better or something?” Lance wanted to disagree (it would have been a lie), but whichever of the two wasn’t holding his neck got a sharp hold on his hair. And tugged. 

The brunet swerved under the assault, hands reaching to his scalp desperately, clasping the wrists of his attacker. He screeched as the asshole yanked him to the wall of the alley. Clearly, the other had let go of his shoulders, because Lance was moving freely until he hit the bricks. The hand in Lance’s hair had released in time for his attacker to slam one of his shoulders forcefully into the wall, and his knees wobbled with the shock echoing through his body. For a moment, air could only shudder past his lips in whimpers, not any deep breaths. He didn’t have a chance to correct that, either, since someone seized his windpipe and crushed. 

That someone was shouting at him, berating him, lifting his body away from the wall, then sending it harshly back (his head hit it _hard_ every time), until the hits stopped adding more pain, because Lance was at his max. The bastard’s speech was all garbled, an incessant droning in Lance’s ears, but none of it was anything Lance could pick apart through his injuries and through the deprivation of oxygen. He heard his heartbeat and the dull thud each time his head hit the wall, but that was it. Words were just buzzing. Yet the hand unclasped from his throat and, when Lance blearily looked up, there were two sets of eyes staring in an overwhelmingly pressing way. They’d stopped speaking. The men were silent and they wanted something. The brief tightening of the hand hovering around Lance’s throat told him they _demanded_ something.

“Well?” Lance blinked at the order. One of the men scowled and launched a fist into Lance’s cheekbone; enough of his hand missed so part of the hit snagged Lance’s lower eyelid. As the fist retreated, the beginning of a black eye started bubbling beneath the surface of Lance’s skin. His head pounded. “Answer me when I ask you something!” No answer came to Lance’s mind and certainly nothing came past his lips. He didn’t know the question—wouldn’t have wanted to give the bastard the satisfaction of a response anyway. He stared again, mouth open and panting, eyes glassy and unfocused, brows low and furrowed. Pleading. The subtle plea in his features was unwelcome; another punch wound up and swung, this one splitting his lip. 

The men got frustrated. And perhaps they’d merely had a rough day, maybe a few too many drinks at a local bar, maybe they’d been recently fired from their jobs. But whatever the reason they had so much pent up fury, they saw Lance as an easy target. Two against one, when the one was already smaller and more petrified, was a clear win for the duo. They knew it wouldn’t be a challenge. So, the one pinning Lance to the wall let go of his neck entirely, not expecting an attempt at an escape.

Lance’s bloodied lips quirked. 

His attackers became aware of their mistake, but by the time there were fingers reaching out for Lance’s neck again, it was too late. Lance let his knees give out under him, and the hands grasping for his throat got a fistful of air. Sitting on the filthy ground, he had a new vantage point; he cracked his knuckles against the closest attacker’s crotch, full speed and heavy impact. “Eat shit, bigot,” Lance spat, squinting through the blood on his lashes to watch his enemy fall. Howling pain echoed in the alley, and when the bastard collapsed, Lance shot up and leapt through the new opening over his foe’s head. Satisfaction soared in his veins like the fizz of a carbonated beverage.

He made for the opening at the end of the alley, the people mindlessly passing by, the safety of the crowd. Unfortunately, he only got about halfway there, before someone had the back of his shirt. His limbs swung wildly for escape. Lance was lifted effortlessly from the ground, then maneuvered around, until the grip was over the side of his skull. Without any time to consider why and without any time to land a hit that granted him freedom, Lance was forced forward. Into the wall, headfirst, _face first,_ and he immediately went limp. 

Sound echoed between his ears. Thoughts flitted about, but none had any form. He couldn’t think to make his limbs move, wasn’t sure he’d be able to move them, if he could think to try. His head was thrusted at the wall again, and other than the pain and the trickle of warmth over his temple and another dribble from his nose, Lance could feel nothing. A muted shout came (Fuck!). Then, came panicked conversation he couldn’t decode (Lance thought he heard bits and pieces: _dumbass, killed him, run,_ and _shit)._ Then, the hand on his head released—after one more knock against the bricks, for good measure—and Lance sagged bonelessly to the cobblestone. 

He blinked.

It was a long blink.

Lance wasn’t sure exactly how long, but when he got his thoughts back, he was fairly certain he’d been entirely unconscious for the duration of that blink. He’d passed out. 

Shakily, Lance forced himself to stand up. He leaned emptily on the wall a moment, brain a blank canvas, until he decided to go the first place he thought of. Well, it wasn’t a place. Lance thought of Keith. His boyfriend would know how to help. Carefully, he hobbled to the end of the alleyway, and continued to the castle. One of his hands remained on the outsides of the shops and houses lining the road at almost all times. When he crossed perpendicular streets, thus losing his support, his speed halved, and he tripped at least five times per intersection. 

People were giving him odd looks. His vision was blurry, but he could see their wary gazes, the way mothers pulled their children’s eyes away in nervous politeness, and the figures approaching him to help. They all knew who he was. Lance’s face, while indubitably battered, was still recognizable. But he didn’t want to be recognized. He was disoriented, confused, and he needed to get to Keith as quickly as possible; his boyfriend was the only one he trusted to help. Everyone else trying to stop him was a source of anxiety. Luckily, he’d worn a hood, and he tugged it up over his head, pulling the drawstrings enough to cover his chin, forehead, and cheeks. After that, no one he passed said anything or treated him any differently.

Until he reached Keith. 

Keith was waiting at the public end of the drawbridge, glancing skittishly at a pocketwatch he’d dragged out of his coat. He tucked it back just as skittishly. It took him twice as long to determine the time as it should have. The watch came back out thrice as fast as it should have, too. His eyes flicked from the street in front of him—scanning every single person who meandered by—to his twisting, fretting palms, which he’d tangled together impatiently. Brows furrowed, he worried his lips under his teeth, looking hurt, as though he’d gotten stood up. Seeing him so crestfallen jogged Lance’s memory. Through the whir of his throbbing skull, he remembered where he’d been going before he’d passed out in the alley. 

He approached his boyfriend warily, staying pressed to the wall of a nearby building as long as he was able. There came a stretch of steps where he had nothing to lean against, though, and he crossed it more so by hobbling than by walking. When he made it to Keith, he all but collapsed, and there was a lack of recognition in the way his boyfriend tensed when Lance cast a hand on his shoulder. Only when Lance made a weak sound and tumbled into his chest, did Keith’s face spark with understanding. 

“Lance?” A hand wound over Lance’s hood, peeling it back, but before any of his injuries could be made out, Lance buried his nose into the crook of Keith’s neck. “Hey, hey,” Keith breathed, gentle and endearingly awkward. “You sick?” A gut reaction churned at that because Lance _couldn’t remember._ Was he sick? Was that all his discomfort came from? His head was reeling, his thoughts were no more sturdy than a pile of leaves in a storm. He couldn’t quite reach his memories of the last couple hours. Lance knew his eyes got hot, started dripping on his boyfriend’s skin, because Keith’s hands lifted to card through his hair stiffly. “You’re alright, Lance.” Though his nose—it felt like it was broken—pounded in pain, he swished it back and forth against Keith’s neck. No, he wasn’t alright. His boyfriend was silent a moment, then he sharply inhaled. Softly, “Then tell me what’s wrong.”

Wheezing, Lance heard his knees creak, then they wobbled and folded; he hung more of his weight on Keith’s shoulders. “Hurt,” he rasped. Keith hastily pushed him away, and when Lance turned his chin downward to continue hiding the wounds, Keith took his chin into one hand, while the other locked around Lance’s bicep like a vice. Tilting everything into the sunlight, he saw it all. Saw the bruises and the split lip and the way Lance could hardly keep his eyes open. Lance saw all of Keith’s face, too, however, and was met with the urge to cry more. His boyfriend’s face was contorted in confusion and concern, and his cheeks paled. The eyes scanning his face weren’t a gentle sort of stern, as he’d become accustomed to; they were horrified. It wasn’t a look Lance liked being directed at him. Made him feel small, inadequate, under the scrutiny. “Keith,” he made a motion to wipe at his tears, but the knight stopped him in favor of doing it himself, “I’m sorry.”

“Gods, don’t be,” Keith’s throat jumped. “What the hell happened, Lance?” He traced a finger over the cut in Lance’s lip, brows furrowing more when the pad came back dotted with blood. Comprehension was in his gaze. His eyes read, _it was recent,_ as they looked at the stain. “How…?” Lance didn’t want to say, wasn’t sure he could, with how his memories flashed in his brain as somewhat spotted and blurred. Everything was unclear. The memories, what he wanted, what he could wrap his tongue around saying; they were all inaccessible. He felt like one of those old pointillism paintings, comprised entirely of dots and specks, but most of his marks were missing, or just grey, or smeared together in large clumps. 

“I don’t,” Lance’s head spun a second, and Keith evidently saw the confusion in his eyes because he waited patiently for it to pass. “I don’t remember? I woke up like this.” The brunet lifted a shaky hand to his hairline, wrestling with the crusted wounds on his scalp. He let his fingers trail to his hood that had settled around his shoulders after Keith had taken it off. Pulling it over his head again, he cast his eyes downward. “Can we just hang out at my place instead of going on a date today?” Lance pried Keith’s fingers from his jawline, cradled them in his jittery palms, and looked pathetically up at Keith through lashes heavy with blood. His chin wrinkled as he tried not to succumb to his need to cry right there, at the drawbridge.

Frowning, Keith wrapped his hands around Lance’s and tugged him towards the bridge. “My place,” he said plainly. His tone was something close to skepticism, like he didn’t believe Lance couldn’t remember how he’d been injured, but the fingers he’d tangled with Lance’s were tantalizingly tender. If Keith didn’t trust him, he wasn’t picking a fight over it yet. Due to either the lack of a fight, or his injuries, Lance didn’t struggle against the pull on his hand. In fact, he followed eagerly, catching up so he could tuck his battered cheekbone atop Keith’s shoulder as a request for support. Keith caught on. His hand released Lance’s, and the newly freed arm slipped around Lance’s waist, snuggly brought him close, and transferred the bulk of their combined weight to Keith. “I’m not letting you walk all the way home like this.” 

Their pace was sluggish the rest of the way. They creaked and groaned across the drawbridge, slow enough that, before the end of the bridge, Lance was able to catch a fairly clear image of himself in the water pooled underneath. From that image, the pure grotesqueness of it, came his sickeningly wrenched stomach, and from that stemmed the absence of surprise at the expression of horror a guard wore as he and Keith approached. Keith paused them both in front of the guard, asking in hushed tones if she could check if a doctor was in. She replied in the negative, as she couldn’t leave her post, but she waved over another guard who could. That satisfied Keith and he eased Lance into walking again.

It felt like only a minute before they were at the knights’ barracks, yet Lance knew some of the quickness of their journey was likely because he was fading in and out of mindfulness. A wisp of the word _concussion_ fluttered in his brain once, but he lost it before he could commit it to memory. He was left with a phantom emptiness in his mind where the implication had been. The hole was filled, however, when he and Keith limped through the doorway to the barracks; filled with a migraine from the bright lights along the ceiling and the stench of cleaning supplies. It was nicer, more polished, than the regular soldier building, but Lance had to wonder at what cost. He felt as though he was moments away from suffocating.

Keith all but carried him the rest of the way to his room, and the motion he used to get Lance seated on his bed might be described by some as dropping. “Sit,” he commanded, crisp and sharp. Lance did, then drew his hands into his lap, watching as Keith marched away to fumble in the bathroom. A bottle of rubbing alcohol and a first aid kit sat folded into his arms when he returned. Upon seeing the latter opened, Lance noticed it was half missing. It was a collection of miscellaneous ointments and bandages, some of which were torn carelessly so strings of fabric ran down the sides of the kit. _Used,_ he noted, dully. 

His boyfriend sat across from him on the bed. Their knees brushed, and Lance found that made him only half as nervous as the line of Keith’s lips, which tipped down at either end. “Guess you use that thing a lot, huh,” Lance slurred. A pathetic start to an obviously dodgy conversation. An empty one. An excuse to ignore his mistakes. “You should try to be more careful, you know.” His tense habit of rambling worked through the muck in his head, and he began to uselessly prattle. It was hypocritical. Keith dropped the first aid kit on the bed; the needles inside rattled, and that shut Lance up.

“Do you honestly not remember?” Keith tilted his head back to trudge his fingers through his hair. He knotted a hair tie to keep his bangs out of his eyes, while Lance subtly twitched his head back and forth to convey his scarcity of knowledge. “Not at all?” Lance averted his gaze. Bits and pieces came back to him when he let his mind try to wander away, as though reminding him something was wrong. Trapping him in the pain and confusion. “Because I have a hard time believing you managed to get smacked around to the point of looking like you got run over by a damn horse, and then didn’t remember _any_ of it. Is—is that what happened? You got mauled by a horse and you’re too embarrassed to admit it? You don’t have to be—” 

Lance smiled fondly at Keith’s adoption of his rambling habit, but cut him off with a broken, “No, that’s not it.” 

“Then _what,_ Lance?” He was exasperated, but he moved to open the first aid kit, despite the strain he was enduring to keep himself composed. Lance watched Keith’s fingers acutely as he took a cotton ball out of the kit and wet it with rubbing alcohol. The appendages were shaking, practically liquid. Keith dropped the ball twice before he managed to get it to Lance’s cheek, and he dropped it again as he took it away. “So?” he prompted, as though Lance had been purposely avoiding his question. Maybe he had. For a moment, the knight met Lance’s eyes, gaze steeled like he was facing a foe, but then he looked to the next piece of cotton. “Take off your jacket, there’s blood down your neck I need to clean.” By the tremor in his voice, it was easy to tell that such a thing bothered Keith more than the man would have said aloud. 

Looping his fingers under the hem of his sweater, Lance obeyed the request. With the jacket smothering his speech, he gained the confidence to admit, “I can remember a little. Since I woke up in an alley, I think I passed out from whatever caused the injuries, but I’m not sure for how long.” He tugged it the rest of the way off, placed it to the side, and straightened out the tank top he’d been wearing underneath. His neck felt cold without his hood cluttered around it. After all of that, he finally looked at Keith, who was wetting the cotton he’d grabbed before. Keith looked up, and immediately lost the swab he’d made. It rolled on the wooden floor, collecting dust, and Lance watched it go. His head went back to swimming with confusion. Why had Keith dropped it? His hands were shaking less.

“Holy shit,” Keith breathed, hands reaching frantically for Lance’s recently exposed throat. His touch was feather light. Lance absentmindedly turned his cheek to give his boyfriend more access to whatever he was observing. “Look at your neck, what the _hell_ are these bruises from—” Keith stopped, abruptly. His hands fell across Lance’s shoulders, and Lance suddenly found himself hurrying to avoid his boyfriend’s eyes. “Who did this?” Wincing, Lance shook his head and shrugged. Things were falling back into place slowly. The mention of bruises hastened the process, and he grimaced as more of his memories overwhelmed him. 

“I don’t know,” but then he did. Fast enough to knock all the air from his lungs, he remembered the men in the alley, why punches were thrown, and exactly how many times his head had hit the wall. He remembered, and, upon remembering, Lance decided it was even more pertinent that he did not tell Keith. There would be blood to pay, and men like the ones in the alley were _looking_ for an excuse to validate their bigotry. If Keith went in, fists raised, they’d make him out to be exactly what they’d beaten Lance up for denying. Quickly, Lance said, “It’s not important.” Keith guffawed at the distinction. 

“Lance, who the hell hurt you? There’s nothing other than a human hand that would cause _strangling marks._ So, spill it. Who did it?” Finally, he met Keith’s eyes. He shook his head again, on the brink of tears. “Lance, if you think I’m just going to let someone who tried to _kill_ you walk away, you must not know who you’re dating.” Keith prepared another cottonball to funnel his frustration. Motions benevolent compared to the tone with which he was speaking, he cleaned all the blood on Lance’s cheeks. His eyes were so intent, his movements so calculated, breaths perfectly measured so as not to brush across Lance’s cuts and irritate them. It was intoxicating to know he was so careful. “I’m gonna kill whoever thought they could hurt _my_ boyfriend.” 

“Please don’t, Keith,” Lance said, words mangled by a sudden drowsiness. His boyfriend grunted, stuffing supplies haphazardly back into the kit. “A doctor will be here soon, yeah? It’s not worth fighting over a solved problem.” Keith shoved the box of supplies away from where it was balanced next to his thigh, instead pushing it to the baseboard of his bed. He faced Lance with heat in his eyes. Their legs pressed closer, Keith practically hovering over Lance.

“Why are you defending this person?” Tenderly, the knight reached forward to cup the ring of bruises around Lance’s neck. He brushed a thumb over some of the darkest bruises, and his fingers curled around the back of Lance’s head, up into his hair. He prodded what Lance knew had been a contact point between his skull and the bricks, and the brunet watched Keith wince when he felt warm blood on his fingertips. “Why won’t you let me give the bastard what they have coming?” There was a stark contrast between the tone the knight was using to speak and the way he was touching Lance; it shook Lance to the point of emotional whiplash.

Curling in on himself, Lance tightened his shoulders. His jaw locked. “That’s what they’re counting on you doing.” And that was all Lance wanted to say on the matter. He didn’t want to explain what he meant because any more details would only serve to make Keith angrier, more reckless. But the furrow of his brows, the slip of his hands down Lance’s shoulders and arms, the hold he gathered on Lance’s palms, were all endearing and tempting and they coaxed more out of him. “There was more than one of them,” he added, lamely.

Keith scoffed. “What, you think I’m not willing to bash more than one guy’s teeth in for you?” Lance shook his head, Keith frowned at how seriously Lance had taken the question. Anger was still seething in his eyes, which Lance noticed as he looked closer. His hands were trembling with fury, tight around Lance’s. If he let go of Lance, if Lance pulled away, there was no doubt he’d sprint off and hunt the culprits down himself. It was hard to ignore the vinegar in Keith’s expression, now that Lance had seen it. “Why were you even in a fight anyway?” Bitter. That was the tone. Like Keith had gotten a mouthful of soap before speaking. But it was a fair question nonetheless. Lance wasn’t as hotheaded as Keith, wasn’t as prone to using fists before words, so it seemed unlikely for him to get in an alleyway brawl. Fair as the question was, however, Lance didn’t want to answer. _Keith_ was the reason. _Keith_ couldn’t know. With an uneven, unclear gaze, Lance bunched his shoulders up around his neck in a shrug. His head injuries throbbed.

“It’s not important.”

“Bullshit!” Keith let go of Lance’s hands and let one of his own trail up to his boyfriend’s scalp again. Must have noticed the way the shrugging made Lance wince. He prodded in a few of the bloody spots, muttering to himself, “How did you get this many head injuries?” Then, resigning to waiting for the doctor to show, Keith brought up the same question again. “How did you manage to piss multiple people off _that_ much? These are serious bruises, dumbass.” That one stung. Keith’s voice was rising in volume and dipping in pitch, turning gravelly, and his anger was mainly directed toward Lance’s attackers, but some of it was dripping onto Lance like hot wax anyway. 

“I’m not a dumbass,” he countered quickly. Dumb wasn’t a word he liked. He felt stupid so much of the time, called himself stupid too often to brush off the times other people said it. “No more than you are, Mr. Impulsive.” Lance backed away a couple inches, so their thighs were pried apart. The contact felt too hot, overwhelming, and the angry flush on his cheeks was already warm enough alone. His arms crossed over his chest, chin curling down to minimize the amount of space he took up in his frustration.

Keith mirrored his closedoff posture, hissing, “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, get off your high horse, Keith. You get into fights all the time! Lay off.” The room got at least four degrees warmer as he said that. 

“I don’t walk away with a broken nose and a dented skull every time, though.” Keith huffed, leaning back to mock a relaxed demeanor. His shoulders were still tense, though, and that gave his ruse up. His hands were clenched into fists and shaking, too. “Oh, sorry. I meant _stumbled_ away. You can’t even walk right.” 

Standing, Lance pointed a finger. “Hey, back off! And if you don’t get scuffed up, how come your med kit is so empty?” Keith ground his teeth, having been caught and exposed, before he stood up to match Lance. They were the same height, but Keith was beginning to pull ahead in muscle mass from knight training. His shoulders were broader by a miniscule amount. He wasn’t big, but he certainly looked like he was when he leaned in close to Lance for a counter. 

“That’s not the point! Just tell me how you managed to get yourself into this mess, dammit! What the fuck made you lose your cool?” His arms were still folded on his chest, but his torso was angled forward, so he could get close and aggressive in his boyfriend’s face. Lance felt a snarky response rise up his throat, but he swallowed it down, gritting his teeth. Then Keith threw his hands up in exasperation at his silence, whirling on his heel to stomp away, and the barrier keeping Lance’s words down snapped.

“You did,” he bit. Keith stopped marching away, turning rapidly back to Lance. He looked incredulous and irate. Downright hostile. “They were talking shit, saying you’re a monster because you’re not from here and it pissed me off. I didn’t initiate a conversation expecting to get my head cracked against the damn bricks, but I guess they didn’t like being told they were bigots.” Lance shrugged dramatically, more to show his temper than to imply a shortage of understanding. Steam billowed in his mouth, a putrid stench of wrath hung in his lungs, and he felt his emotions tingling up and down his spine as he awaited a response.

Keith blew hot air out of his nose. “You’re so _stupid,_ Lance.” 

And that was it. The straw that broke the camel’s back. Lance couldn’t help that his knees buckled. His pulse thrummed, his chest ached like it was empty, and his arms got hot with rushing blood. Keith had sounded so sincere, so honest, so _naked_ in the way he’d said that. It left Lance cold and raw. 

Keith thought he was stupid? His own boyfriend thought he was stupid? Arms uncrossing, his hands looped together and pressed against his chest, as though that would make it feel less empty. It didn’t. Inadequacy stirred in his mind where it had previously been dormant, and it trickled all the way down to his feet. And made him run. Without another word to Keith, he made for the exit, shoving past the doctor right as she opened the door. 

It was during a moment before Lance ran off that Keith had realized his mistake. There were a few instants in which Lance’s entire appearance changed, and it was in those instants that Keith easily saw what he’d done. Frozen in place as he registered what he’d said, he fumbled with his thoughts. For a split second, Keith’s heart didn’t move. For a split second—a fracture in time that felt like an agonizing eternity, but was no more than a piece of a second—his heart stopped beating in his chest. In fact, everything stopped. He felt like he was suspended in water; not moving, not breathing, not dying or living. He felt trapped. 

And then things began to start again, one by one. 

The first to move again was the sight of Lance’s face. His eyes went from full of anger to full of tears remarkably fast. His jaw fell slack, then clenched in restraint, a tug to keep himself together. His eyebrows rose in a completely miserable expression. Keith’s tongue went dry. 

In the next instant, Keith became aware of Lance’s chest. It unfroze while the rest of time remained suspended. It stuttered with breaths that held back tears, and Keith thought he heard Lance’s heart shatter in that chest. Something broke in Keith, too. 

Then finally, painfully, returned the movements of Keith’s own heart, pounding back to life in a way that left him winded and aching, feeling as though he was about to collapse under the pressure of his actions. But he never fell. He only stared, horrified by what he’d said and what his words were doing to his boyfriend, as that very same boyfriend turned and sprinted away. 

His hand rose, quickly but uselessly, to grasp at the back of Lance’s shirt. To stop him. But he got nothing in his palm but defeat. Wobbling backwards, he flopped onto the bed. Why had he done that? Sure, he was angry, but Lance was hurt, he shouldn’t have blown up at him. He’d said someone had hit his head against brick—cracked, was the word he’d used, actually—and Keith grimaced. Lance was probably delirious with a concussion, in addition to his broken nose and his split lip and his black eye. And Keith called him stupid. He wasn’t. _Obviously,_ he wasn’t. It was just a fight, a _stupid_ fight. Keith shouldn’t have—

He yanked his hair and burrowed his face into his hands. What an asshole thing to say.

The knight drowned in his reflection, his consideration and obsession over the facts. Mistakes looped and played on repeat in his head. He _knew_ he would have done the same thing if he’d seen someone talking poorly about Lance. If he’d passed an alley and had heard someone call his boyfriend a monster, Keith had no doubts he would have done exactly what Lance had done. In fact, he would have done worse. He wouldn’t have gone in for a conversation, he would have gone in to deck the closest bastard in the nose. What Lance had done wasn’t stupid. It was incautious, reckless, impulsive, but not certainly stupid. His choice had been blinded by loyalty. 

The doctor still stood helplessly in the doorway, but when Keith shot her a glare, she nodded and left silently. He wondered if he should chase after her, ask her to stick around until Lance came back so she could help him. But he didn’t make any motions to act on his urge. The door shut behind her and left Keith in an empty room. To wallow. This wasn’t how his day was supposed to go. He cried a couple tears into his palms, then pinched his nose, and then he decided. 

He shot up and took steps—twice as wide as they would have been any other time—to the door. Swinging it open, he worked himself into a sprint until he reached the exit of the barracks. Lance couldn’t have gotten far in the five minutes he’d spent at a loss. Maybe about as far as the plaza, since he couldn’t have kept his racing speed for long. At least, not with his concussion and his stumbling gait. Keith was going faster than that now, eyes swivelling frantically to be sure Lance hadn’t passed out by the side of the road. Or in the moat. _Gods, please don’t let him have fallen into the moat,_ Keith begged as he trotted over the bridge. Luckily, he seemed to be in the clear in that regard, and checking the water was about his only break in pace.

Most people stepped out of his way when they saw him running, but there were a few times when he had to narrowly dodge them with a well-positioned sidestep. Somehow, he made it the whole way to the plaza without knocking anyone over. He came to a sudden stop when he made it to the center. People swarmed him, brushing past him on either side, and it pushed him in circles as he tried to get a look around. There were too many people to tell if Lance was among them. Panic set in, and Keith worried what would happen if he wasn’t able to find Lance.

People died from concussions, didn’t they?

If Lance wasn’t in the plaza, where else would he be? Just outside of town, there was an old peach orchard he would wander around after bad days. He had a restaurant or two he’d frequent, maybe he’d be in one. Keith hoped Lance wasn’t so concussed he considered going to a bar, but it was certainly possible. As far as Keith knew, Lance was a little barren in the friend department, having moved to Castle Town not too long ago, yet Keith couldn’t help but wonder if he had at least one person to turn to. Perhaps he’d stay with them, they’d get him medical attention, he’d be alright. Even with all those possibilities, though, Keith wouldn’t sleep easy until he’d found Lance. And no matter how many times he swept his eyes over the crowd, he couldn’t see him anywhere. 

Irritation bubbled under his skin. He’d fucked up. And now Lance was concussed and vulnerable and it was anyone’s guess what kind of scum would try to take advantage of a stumbling, injured man like that. Gods, he could be getting mugged, beaten up more, and Keith was standing there, useless in the crowd. He wanted to pry his hair from his scalp. He _had_ to make things right soon or he’d lose his mind. Where _was_ Lance? All Keith’s mind supplied was that he was hurt, a constant repeating, droning mantra his brain insisted on echoing. _He’s hurt and it’s your fault he ran away. It’s your fault if he gets himself into more trouble. Just like it was your fault he got hurt to begin with._ The sounds of chatting townspeople became oppressive at an alarming rate, and it took every ounce of patience Keith had not to scream and bolt to the closest place Lance might be, before checking the plaza thoroughly.

Someone came up behind him. He didn’t pay it much mind, thinking it was a passerby who also needed to find something. The center of the plaza was the best vantage point for that, so he scooted a step to the side in an effort to provide the stranger some space. It was as much as he was willing to help at the moment; Lance was his priority, not helping the townspeople his knighthood said he should protect. Lance first. 

The stranger occupied the space Keith had opened. He didn’t start to search, however, and instead cast his eyes to Keith. His voice was low and angrry as he spoke. “Are you the new knight?” Keith turned, frustration in his eyes, to the man who’d just spoken. He hadn’t asked nicely. The inquiry was a growl, an accusation, and the knight knew the two were due for an altercation. No one asked him in that tone unless they were about to pick a fight. It wasn’t like Keith didn’t know how a select few people were after his head like that. How they hated him without knowing him. He knew exactly why they felt how they did, but it disgusted him. The least these people could do was find a valid reason to hate him—like the fact that he’d sent his boyfriend off _alone_ while _concussed_ because he was too much of an _asshole_ to watch his tongue, his head provided. The blatant xenophobia struck a chord with him more on that particular day than it did usually. It was merely that he was on a hunt at the moment, he was _pissed_ at himself, and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with that sort of shit. Or maybe it had to do with the fact that the same xenophobia had almost gotten his husband killed that morning. Standing taller, he made his disdain towards the conversation clear in the bitter lines of his face. Nonetheless, he grunted and nodded in confirmation. “Oh, good,” the man grumbled, “then I can tell you how I feel directly.” The man began to tug up his sleeves, rolling up the white fabric to expose raised fists. And Keith’s eyes honed in on what littered those raised fists.

On his knuckles. Scraped, red, and if Keith squinted, they looked a little purple—bruised—in some spots. He wasn’t always quick to piece things together, but he was angry enough that it became easy in that moment. Battered fists, a fight to pick with Keith, certainly stronger than Lance; those were all the descriptors of who’d hurt Keith’s boyfriend. Who could have done it. The boiling rage in the pit of Keith’s stomach burst up his throat, and he growled. His fists were twitching in violent outrage. In an instant, he was rolling up his own sleeves. “Fucker,” he hissed, stalking towards the man. The bastard was taller and wider than Keith was, but Keith had taken bigger men down. Shiro was bigger than the stranger and Keith had bested him in sparring plenty of times. And at the moment, he had adrenaline and hatred on his side. It would be effortless. Snarling, he shouted, “I guess you’re the one,” and the whole plaza turned to look at the two. “You fight a brunet about my height earlier? Skinny, innocent eyes.” He didn’t know why that was the feature he thought was prominent on Lance’s face. Maybe it was the profound and lingering image of Lance’s eyes widening in hurt when Keith had called him stupid. Like a sunspot on his pupils he couldn’t get rid of.

The brute grinned. Openly. All his teeth were out, his lips pulled back. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “Long legs. That was definitely me, shithead.” Keith felt something get hot in his gut, and his vision swam a second in fury. Every word out of the guy’s mouth had Keith’s approach hastening, boiling blood pushing steam up his throat and out his ears. “Slammed his head right into a brick wall. Poor kid passed out immediately. You oughta get tougher backup, Galran.” At that, something gurgled in Keith’s throat—liquid anguish, or bubbling impatience, or just _pure, hissing loathing_ —and he burst forward, fist high. 

There was a crowd around them, then. Not just wary eyes of passersby, but a full circle, watching as the duo tumbled over with the force of Keith’s punch. A collective wince ran like a wave through the group.

His fist crunched cheekbone, and both men hit the cobblestone with such momentum, Keith could almost hear his enemy’s skull crack.  He’d done the same to Lance before, rammed his head into a wall, and all for something that wasn’t even his boyfriend’s fault. So, would serve this guy right, he figured. If his head split like an overripe fruit, it would be because he deserved it. 

But the momentum that might have been enough to smash the stranger’s brains against the stone, was also enough to send Keith toppling off his body, losing his position on top. He was quick to try to reassert his position, however, and he crawled over to the moaning, groaning figure. His fist lifted again, crashing down over a nose, and then again over an eye. Over his lips. Over the other eye. Over the jawline, over the nose once more for good measure. Slowly, the man gained the motivation to get up, but Keith wasn’t having it; he wasn’t letting him up until he had at least _three times_ as many bruises as he’d given Lance. The knight pinned his throat down with an arm, swung a leg up to crush the stranger’s wrist beneath his boot, and all the while, his other arm swung ruthlessly down to dent more of his features. Keith would be sure to find the other bastard who’d hurt Lance. He’d give him the same treatment. Just as soon as he was done knocking the snot out of this bastard—

All of a sudden, there was a hand on the back of his collar, yanking him up. Hissing like a feral cat, Keith scrabbled to reach the bruised man again with his knuckles. He noticed they were smeared with blood, and he realized he didn’t care. Gods, he _wanted_ blood. Because the audacity of someone to hit Lance was unreal. To slam his head against a wall, to turn the lids of his eyes as dark as the irises, to split the lip of someone who did absolutely nothing wrong. And then to go marching up to that innocent stranger’s boyfriend and boast. That took a lot of _something._ Maybe courage. Maybe Keith’s old friend, rash stupidity. Either way, the grip around his shirt was entirely unwelcome, and he was seconds away from ripping off the wrist of the person responsible. 

“Easy,” someone grunted next to his ear. Keith swung his chin up over his shoulder to gnash his teeth at them, but even from his peripheral, he easily recognized who it was. Shiro. “I’m sure he deserves it, but you need to stand down, Keith.” His fists stopped swinging, he ceased his kicking and thrashing, and he let the other knight set him on his feet. The bastard he’d been bashing was bordering on unconscious. Not as bloody and bruised as Keith would have liked to see, not enough broken bones to sate the hunger in Keith’s veins, but it would have to do. The rush from the fight, the mindless buzz in his ears, began to wind down. Keith felt his hands shake, recognized the wetness on his cheeks.

He clenched his fists by his sides after smearing his tears with the back of one of his wrists. Swinging an arm in gesture to the battered man, Keith blubbered, “Shiro, he—”

“I know,” Shiro breathed, leaning over to get a look at Keith’s face in search of bruises. Keith batted his helpful, well-meaning hands away.

“No, you don’t!” Shiro blinked, startled. “It’s not about me—he can say what he wants about me—it’s Lance! This damn shithead, this fucking bastard,” his mentor wore a warning look on his face at his word choice, “he fucking got a friend and kicked Lance around like a godsdamned football. You haven’t seen him! He looks terrible! They hit his head on the wall so hard, I’m sure Lance has a concussion, and look at the guy, he’s, he’s proud of it!” Keith got all his words out in a rush, panting by the end of it. Shiro was silent, without any advice or answers for a moment, as he soaked it all in. His eyes held a passive kind of anger as they swept the stranger on the plaza ground. But he didn’t say anything to him or to Keith. The crowd hadn’t dissipated yet, and they were just as quiet and useless. The only one who wasn’t wordless was the bastard bleeding on the stones below. 

He laughed, spitting blood to the side, and he spoke in a gravelly voice. “He’s right. I _am_ proud. Anyone who’s friends with an invader deserves to be shoved around a bit, wouldn’t you say?” Keith fired up, and Shiro’s hand found a spot on his nape again as he whirled on the stranger. 

“You think this is a fucking joke? Lance didn’t do anything! You beat up an innocent person! Who’s the real monster here, huh? He’s a _tailor,_ you had no business fighting with him!”

At that, there was a murmur of comprehension in the crowd. _That_ Lance? Everyone knew that Lance. He was the only tailor in town, so just about everybody had met him on some occasion. They all knew he wasn’t the type of guy to warrant a beating. He was kind, he was welcoming, and maybe he was a bit noisy and argumentative, but he had a bowl of candy on his counter to give to kids, for damn sake. No one like that could be all that bad. And the crowd recognized that. If ever a mob had been won over more quickly, Keith hadn’t heard of it. 

Someone in the swarm gave a supportive cry of what Keith had said, and then the rest of the group joined in. Soon, everyone was screeching and stomping their feet, each member with their own monologue, their own guilt trip for the collapsed man at the center of the ring. Shiro faced them, hands held up for them to stop, but it was no use. He turned next to Keith, muttering over the crowd. “Where’s Lance?” Keith shook his head, gnawing on his lip. “Did he run off?” Keith nodded. “Go find him,” Shiro said, “I’ll clean this up. Get him to a doctor. Now. Queen Allura has healers, if he needs them.” There was a word of gratitude on Keith’s lips, but Shiro turned to quell the uproar shortly after telling Keith to leave, so he resolved to thank him later. For the moment, he wiped his bloody knuckles on his pants (hoping they were dark enough that the stains wouldn’t show), and started off in the way he’d been going before.

Lance. He had to find him. To fix what he’d said, to get those wounds looked at, to make sure his boyfriend wasn’t sitting in a corner somewhere, feeling unsafe and alone. Keith needed him to know he didn’t think Lance was stupid, and needed him to know that he was going to be certain, from then on, that nobody with bloodlust for Keith would take it out on Lance. He was safe. Keith would do anything to be sure of that. Lance had to know he would. 

At a loss for where to restart his search, though, Keith decided to look the first place he thought Lance might be. The closest, too. Lance’s shop was only a few turns away, but Keith’s pace was driven with urgency anyway; he was antsy to get to his boyfriend before the man could inflict more mental wounds on himself. There were only two things able to slow his race to the shop. One, his own self-hatred, his frustration with himself, and the way it made him stop to dry heave by the side of the road every twenty steps. He was disgusted with himself, sick with guilt. Worse was how he feared Lance likely felt the same. The second thing that broke his speed was the impulse to scan each and every alley he passed. Which one had been the one they’d attacked Lance in? Would the other culprit be lingering around the street still? Bloodlust was thick and scalding in his ears, gushing with every pound of his heart. Lance was his top priority, and Keith shouldn’t have been looking for a fight—a distraction, a hindrance in his determination to help Lance—he wouldn’t be able to turn down if he found it, but he couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help the desire to act on the violent impulse tickling the tips of his fingers. The need was like a fire licking up his chest, and the only way to keep Keith from burning alive was to swing his fist and hit flesh. Vengeance. That’s what it was. Primal vengeance, tearing his attention away from what mattered: helping Lance. 

Fortunately, he made it to Lance’s store without spotting anyone suspicious, and even luckier, the door to the home side of the building was unlocked. Swung partially open, too, but that concerned Keith more than it reassured him. If nothing else, it meant Lance had been there. But the lights were all off and the door swished beckoningly on its hinges, inviting anyone from the streets outside to waltz right in. Sneak in and take advantage of the careless welcome. Stealing, destroying; Keith’s head whirled at all the dangerous possibilities. He feared what the open door and dimmed lights meant could be lurking inside. Quite possibly what he feared most was that it was only Lance inside, and he’d have to face his mistakes in the dark and the suffocating silence. 

Gingerly, he pressed the pads of his fingers to the door. It didn’t creak as he created a wider opening for himself, but he wished it had. It would have perhaps smothered the sound of sobbing from down the hall. But the door had done no such thing, and Keith battled queasiness when he heard that bleak sobbing. His hand curled over his lips and he froze in the doorway, as though he wanted to bolt. As though backing out was ever an option. He’d done this, he’d caused that sobbing. Hadn’t he? There were things he should have noticed that he didn’t.

Shutting the door, he turned the thought over in his mind. 

The time Keith had jokingly called Lance a fool, and the subsequent downward spiral of Lance’s mood. He hadn’t laughed once the remainder of the day. The time Keith had scoffed and mumbled an endearing, “you dumbass,” and Lance shivered. He didn’t meet Keith’s eyes for another hour. The time Lance complained about his sister’s most recent letter to him, in which she’d brought up his poor performance in a biology lesson as a child. He had berated himself for every mistake he made for a week. The time— _times_ —Lance had shown up at Keith’s in the middle of the night, trembling from nightmares, each of which he’d described as being about rejection, replacement, uselessness. He had spent hours calling himself weak and _stupid_ for crying over them every time.

Keith noticed it all, understood the strangeness of those events, but hadn’t _once_ considered the commonality between them. Stupidity. It was plainly visible now, but he’d failed to notice it fast enough. He wondered if he’d be able to bounce back from this one. It wasn’t like the other times; he’d called Lance stupid so bluntly and with his intentions completely bare. Clearly, when he said it, it hadn’t been a joke, and while he himself knew he hadn’t meant it—not after he’d cooled his head, at least—was there any way he could convey that to Lance? The crying down the hall told him the answer was likely a no.

He hooked a finger into the lace of one of his boots, untying them. He took a long time peeling the leather back from his skin, and an even longer time huddling his shoes in the corner in a neat stance. Though he told himself it was to keep the house tidy, he knew it was really just procrastination. How could he possibly put the words together? The only thing keeping him from giving up was the miserable concept of losing Lance. Gods, he’d do anything for Lance—he knew that most profoundly—and yet this one apology, this one conversation seemed so out of reach. 

He’d do it. 

Obviously, he’d do it; losing Lance was under no circumstances an option. Keith loved him too much.

The thought made him dizzy.

Love.

Was he ready for that? 

The admittance of it to himself was daunting and anxiety inducing. It didn’t matter. He knew that was the cause of the fear in his chest. Thick and palpable and desperate. He _had_ to fix things. Losing Lance had not been his plan when he’d awakened that morning, and he wasn’t going to let it happen. 

Squaring his shoulders, but keeping his footsteps light, he moved to Lance’s bedroom. Upon reaching the doorway, he stopped. He waited, as though he’d get an invitation to pass through the threshold. The door was open, he could see Lance, and if Lance didn’t have his face pressed to his sopping pillowcase, he would have seen Keith, too. Lance looked miserable; Keith could see smears of blood on his bedsheets and hands, like he’d reopened a wound somewhere. Or it had never closed. Even worse was how he sounded. Raspy wheezing and loud, wet sobs. Keith felt out of place interrupting his tears. What if he made it all worse?

“Lance,” he said on such a thin breath it almost didn’t sound like anything. His boyfriend looked up, then immediately dropped his face again, crying and hacking harder. But he tried to muffle it more, too. Shoved his face closer to the pillow to smother himself and his noises. Bruised and cut shoulders were heaving, wracked with wails, and Keith knew it had to hurt. Undoubtedly, Lance was crying as much from the pain as he was from what Keith had said. Either way, Keith knew it was his fault. 

His stomach burned. His knees wavered. His chest stuttered. 

He was out of words, out of strength. All he had left were the tears sizzling at the backs of his eyes. Keith took an unsteady step forward, hand coming to rest on the brass doorknob as he passed. It was cold—or maybe his skin was merely flush with guilt and stress—and it pulled at his flesh when he tried to let go. Like it was dragging him away. But away wasn’t an option. For a second, Keith grappled at and battled the words he was thinking of saying. Swallowed them down and coughed them back up, the insistent tug at his heel to the exit driving him mad. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Nothing that would make it better.

“I’m not stupid,” Lance gurgled suddenly. He untucked his face from his pillow and backed himself towards the corner of his bed, where it was flush against the wall. His line of sight remained low; he looked at his hands or maybe his lap, Keith couldn’t tell. He wasn’t meeting Keith’s gaze, but he was also no longer weeping. Just sniveling, rubbing the heels of his palms over his eyes. No flinch passed through his form when Keith took one step, two steps, three steps, so Keith crossed the room in its entirety. “I’m not stupid,” he heard again, when he cautiously kneeled at the edge of the bed (he wasn’t going to sit without Lance’s explicit invitation, not as things were between them at the moment).

“I know—”

Lance met Keith’s wary eyes. “Why are you mad, then? I’m not any dumber than you are. Why would you say that?” Keith folded his arms on the mattress, allowing a couple inches of contact between himself and the furniture. Slowly, he placed his chin atop his arms. His head shook, almost on its own. 

“I don’t know. I was angry, I didn’t mean it. You’re not dumb.” Keith’s voice was softer, more careful than he’d ever heard it before. He could feel the fondness and the guilt rumbling in his chest while he spoke. In the gentle tug of his brows together and the tender sweep of his lips into a frown, he felt it, too. Had he always acted so obviously smitten?

“Why were you angry?” Blue eyes turned silver as Lance teared up again. His chest started to shudder and heave; he wasn’t getting enough air. He began to fumble with his hands, dragging a thumb to his teeth to gnaw at the nail. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to—”

“I _know._ You’re okay, I promise. You’re okay. I’m not mad, I was just,” he paused, “I was frustrated. Because you got hurt. And,” he dragged his gaze to Lance’s pillow in an attempt to distract himself; admitting fault was hard. “It’s my fault. This happened because of me and my knighthood and you were just trying to help, I _know,_ but it’s hard.” Restlessly, Keith dug his nails into the arm under his chin. Muffled and quiet, he said, “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Lance said briskly. Too quickly; he was too quick to brush his emotions under the rug. “I’ve been called stupid before, I’ll be fine.” Keith sighed, unfolding his arms and standing up. The other man watched him do it, shoulders tense, and curled his knees to his chest. He hid his face in his legs. “I’ll be fine.”

Swallowing, Keith crossed his arms. Nerves throbbed in his pulse, turned his ears hot, made his eyes water. “It’s not fine,” he drawled, hesitance heavy in his tone when he thought of what he’d have to admit. How much talking he’d have to do to smooth this out. How open he’d have to be with his emotions. He was going to have to lift the rug and expose everything he’d brushed under it. He couldn’t do anything less if he was asking the same of Lance. “I shouldn’t have said it. It’s not true, and I let my frustration get the better of me. You probably shouldn’t have done what you did, yeah, but,” he made an aggravated noise and yanked at the roots of his hair. “That’s not the same as stupid. I should have never used that word. I didn’t realize it bothers you so much.” Smearing a tear with the pad of his thumb, he added. “It’s no excuse, but I need you to know I didn’t mean it.”

Lance stared at him a moment. He swished his eyes from Keith’s earnest face to his arms, knotted and taut in front of him. His gaze was calculating, comprehensive of just how sincere Keith was being. Determining if he was telling the truth. The knight didn’t waver and eventually his confidence won, because Lance blinked quickly, letting his face fall to turn to his bent knees again, before Keith could see him cry. He sucked a hasty and trembling breath in. His head lifted in a rush.

He asked, “Really?” Then, spiraling into the urge to ramble, he continued. “Are you sure? ‘Cuz I don’t think I—”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Keith confirmed, discomfort woven into his voice at the nakedness of his soul. It was hoarse, like his vocal chords were strung too tight. “I promise you.” Uncertainty plagued Lance’s face, despite the reassurance. So it wasn’t enough. Resigning himself to the fact that he’d have to come entirely clean to convince his boyfriend of anything, Keith unwound his arms and clenched fists at his sides instead. “I only said that because I’m not used to this.”

“This?” Lance echoed.

“This,” the knight said, assuredly. “Caring about people.” While he didn’t notice it, he started to pace. He purposely kept his hands down by his hips to keep himself from looking closed off, but he lost track of his legs, which were sending him in small circles in front of the bed. “Lance you’re not stupid, I didn’t mean that. You were reckless but that’s not the same as—look. Look, I just. I just don’t like seeing you hurt and I panicked.” He shook his head, knots of hair hitting the sides of his neck. That wasn’t good enough, not explicit enough; he wasn’t opening up to Lance like he needed to. The words, the truth, caught on the end of his tongue as if a mouse trap had fired when he’d first shown up in Lance’s room. “I love you.” Swallowing, he tacked on a quiet, “Okay?”

Lance gawked, but said nothing. His cheeks flushed a warmer color than they’d been before, and Keith decided he would have enjoyed that fact more if his own face wasn’t even redder. Pushing away from the wall he’d huddled against, Lance pointed a finger at Keith. Then at himself. He shook his head, disbelieving. Though the way his lips silently wrapped around the word _love_ was incredulous, the manner with which he brought his hand to his mouth afterward was entirely, genuinely, _pleasantly_ shocked. Keith watched his boyfriend’s eyes flood with tears.

“I’ve never… loved someone like that before and I… I’m not good at it—at strong emotions. You know how I get, all—all angry and stuff.” His statement was met with stunned silence, and he filled it with rambling; the taste of awkwardness was too bitter on his tongue to keep in his mouth. “And I’m sorry I took that out on you when I was really just mad at the other guys—I met one on the way here and I gave him some broken bones, by the way. Anyway, I’m sorry for what I said and I’m sorry it upset you. ” He shut his eyes, breathing in slowly to steady his rocketing pulse. When he opened his eyes, it was just in time to watch Lance kick off the wall. And just in time to open his arms before Lance barrelled into him. By the time they hit the floor, Keith had tugged Lance into the circle of his arms and cushioned the man’s face in his shoulder. All the ecstatic buzz in his body made it impossible to feel the pain from clattering against the floor, and if the soggy giggling against his neck was any indication, Lance would have been the same if he’d hit the ground, but Keith wasn’t about to run the risk of worsening his concussion. “Gods,” he breathed along Lance’s scalp, indescribably delighted to have Lance’s heat against him again. His arms wound tighter around his boyfriend’s waist. 

Keith breathed in the scent of Lance’s shampoo and the lingering smell of just _Lance._ “You never said it back,” Lance murmured. “When I said it, you never said it back, so I thought you didn’t…” He lifted his nose from Keith’s neck, bracing his hands next to Keith’s head to keep himself up enough to see into his boyfriend’s eyes. His face was stained different colors of bruises, wet with tears, and his eyes and cheeks were red from crying. But at that moment, Keith only saw the way Lance’s curling lips caught the sunlight from the window, the way his cheeks squished his eyes to push more tears free, and the way those joyful, sunny tears splashed on his own face. Raising his hands to bruised cheeks, Keith pulled Lance down so he could kiss him.

Before their lips touched, Keith whispered, “I love you so much,” and he didn’t give Lance a chance to say it back. He had his mouth secured around his boyfriend’s lips, and his hands pressing into the small of his boyfriend’s back, and his arms tugging him closer, sooner than another word could grace the air. Lance hummed blissfully against him, and a second later he fell from resting on his hands to on his elbows, and moved his fingers to fist at Keith’s hair. After a moment, Keith pushed him back by his shoulders, and Lance whined and squirmed. “So, you know I don’t think you’re stupid?” Lance nodded, buzzing his lips in hopes of gaining another kiss. “And you know I’m not mad?”

Groaning, Lance said, “Yes! Now lemme go, please! I want kiss.” His mouth made smooching noises. Keith laughed a little. 

“So, we’re good then?” Lance nodded vigorously, foggy eyes opening to await Keith’s next question. Keith took note of how they’d become misty, though, and he knew of the concussion that likely indicated, too. Step one (fixing the argument he’d started) was complete, and so he needed to get step two out of the way. Doctor visit it was. With a smirk and a gentle laugh, Keith sat up. His boyfriend went with, murmuring something unintelligible and wrapping his arms about Keith’s neck. “Well, if we’re all good, then I think it’s time we get you to a doctor, yeah?” Yelping in mock disagreement, Lance wrinkled his nose, yet he didn’t fight when Keith dragged him upright. In fact, he leaned closer. 

Slurring, Lance asked, “Do I get apology cuddles after?” Keith laughed and agreed, Lance giggled drunkenly. “Thanks, Keith. I love you.” He paused, sniffing. “No one’s mad, no one’s stupid, we’re both going to be okay?” 

 Relaxed, mellow, and relieved, Keith smiled. “No one’s mad. No one’s stupid. And I promise, we’re both going to be okay.”

And that had been that. 

The argument they’d had then was rarely brought up after the fact, and when it was, it was always in a reminiscent way. More a memory of Keith’s first _I love you_ than anything else. It was a fight with a home in all the fond places of their hearts, an altercation that held hands with their nostalgia. Any animosity they’d associated with it had disappeared with Lance’s bruises. 

But now?

Keith feared the argument they were having in the middle of his dark hospital room wouldn’t end the same way. He’d been dodging exchanging anymore words with his husband since they’d fallen quiet. Lance had a look on his face like he was remembering the past, too. Pensive, frustrated. His fingers were clenching the fabric of his pants, and Keith noticed crescents of dried blood when he lifted his hands to prod at the underside of his eyes, tiredly. Had he been that distressed? Well, Keith supposed it would have been reasonable if he was. If the roles had been switched, and Lance had been in the hospital bed, dying, Keith would have been inconsolable.

That’s what Lance had been arguing all along, wasn’t it? He’d defended that Keith would have made the same decisions if faced with the same threats; that was the last thing Lance had said before the silence. And wasn’t he right? Keith thought back to the other fight, when he’d found one of Lance’s attackers. Just as Lance had done, he’d gone in without thinking. Because he’d wanted to defend Lance. Same as Lance had wanted to do for him. They were more similar than he could string words together to express. 

He pinched the bridge of his nose, struggled against an oncoming migraine at the guilt. Really, he had no room to be angry with his husband. While not logical for someone in their right mind, what Lance had done was understandable for someone losing their husband. Anyone would be reckless for someone they loved. _Love._ That was what it all boiled down to, huh? It had been so simple before. A simple declaration of love was all it took to diffuse the situation. Was it always that easy? Was there a thing Keith would say that would take him back to before the fight, give him an escape, a way to reach out and bridge the ravine they’d cracked between them. 

Keith leaned back on his palms to observe Lance. The man he loved. Not the swirling poison on his arm, not the crusts of blood on his palms, but the man he loved as a whole. The drips of rain from his hair, the ones that pooled on his lashes. How lightning flashed outside and outlined the sharp sweep of his nose, how the lamp flickering and rocking on its chain from the ceiling drew golden circles on Lance’s hair. 

He was the picture of devotion. 

He’d taken venom, he’d run through a heavy storm to get a tool to help Keith, he’d put everything on the line, he’d given _Keith_ his everything. And what had Keith done? Keith had yelled at him.

Something on Lance’s face told Keith he was deep in thoughts of the past, likely the same memories Keith had been reviewing. He wondered if Lance was at as much of a loss in terms of what to do, wondered if his husband was also thinking of the past, considering if a solution was as easy in this as it had been then. Wondered if Lance was staring at the distance between them and longing for a simple reminder that love came first. That no matter how frustrated Keith was at Lance’s disregard for his own life, he still loved him boundlessly. That despite his yelling and the tense silence that followed, he loved Lance more than he could express. That everything might just be alright, because they had each other.

Keith wondered, even if Lance had been thinking back to the same time, if Lance would remember what he was going to say next. 

“No one’s mad. No one’s stupid. And I promise, we’re both going to be okay,” he whispered. His chest throbbed, trembled, as he spoke the words he’d said years ago. And Lance lifted his head so fast, eyes so clear and focused and intense, that Keith knew he’d been thinking of the same time, the same phrase, as Keith. Maybe he’d thought of it before the knight, too. Because he certainly knew exactly the truce his husband was proposing with his words, that much was clear. 

Smiling warily and tearily, Lance stuttered a laugh. “I think I deserve apology cuddles for this, too,” he wisped. Then he waddled a few inches closer on his knees. Keith met him halfway, one hand finding its place on Lance’s waist, while the other locked onto the back of his husband’s neck, wet with rain. Lance leaned into his touch, a shudder trickling down his spine like the leftover raindrops. Hands splayed across Keith’s cheeks, cold, but tender and desperate and longing. Nails scrabbled up towards Keith’s hairline for more contact. 

Keith drew his husband closer, licking his lips as he did, laughing anxiously, before he pressed their noses together. He finally felt at peace once he was in their shared body heat again, so he shut his eyes and thanked gods he hardly believed in. With Lance there, in his arms, flush against the tip of his nose, he’d thank and pray to whomever he needed to, just to keep things like that. To keep things perfect.

“Obviously,” he choked. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Lance.” He dipped forward, slotting their lips together. The fingers in his hair curled delightedly. Keith kneaded at Lance’s waist, pinched his shirt in his fists with just as much pleasure. He pulled back so their foreheads touched, and he didn’t open his eyes. Keith let himself thrive in the darkness and the warmth, the pure sense of Lance’s breath on his cheeks and nothing else. Just the taste of salt when he licked his lips and the flutter in Lance’s voice as he laughed quietly. Keith pressed closer so their lips brushed, murmuring, “Thank you for helping me. We’re going to make it through this somehow, I promise.”

“I’m sorry,” Lance said quickly. “I’m sorry we fought, I’m sorry I took half of the venom, but I want you to know that I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I—I just can’t lose you—” His lips tugged away from Keith’s when he shook his head, and Keith took Lance’s temples into his palms to stop him from drifting further. Raising his mouth a few inches, he kissed the tip of his husband’s nose. 

“I know. I understand. I can’t lose you either. You don’t have to be sorry, I understand. And I’m sorry I attacked you like that.” Cautiously, he opened his eyes. He pulled back, just barely, only enough as to see into Lance’s eyes, which had opened a moment after his own. They were teary and they darted immediately to Keith’s, gauging sincerity. Keith smiled. The dam cracked. 

Surging forward, Lance wrenched his eyes shut. He pressed his nose to Keith’s neck, mouth hot and tearstained against Keith’s skin, despite how much Lance was trying to keep from crying harder. But then Keith curled his head over Lance’s shoulder, a weak sob shuddering past his lips, next to Lance’s ear. His hands dropped down around Lance’s spine once more, digging into the back of his husband’s shirt like it was all that was holding him together. Water trailed down his cheeks and onto Lance’s skin, and that sign of weakness was all it took to make the rest of Lance’s dam fall away. 

His vulnerability gushed through the opening, filling the room and Keith’s heart in an instant. Lance lifted his hands to Keith’s back, as if to mirror Keith’s position with tight fists and trembling fingers. And although Keith was crying, although everything was falling to pieces more than it had been before, although both he and Lance were ticking down to death in a day or two (best case scenario), he felt better than he had since their mission started. Yeah, things were crumbling to ruin, but he had Lance. He’d always have Lance. 

Finally, he and Lance had exposed the frustrations weighing on their hearts, and they were falling apart. Together. Their noses, wet with despair, to each other’s necks, and each of their sobs quiet against the other’s injured skin. In a minute, they’d have to get up and find a cure; in a day, they’d have to find their enemies; in a week, they’d have to deal with all the aftermath. But none of that mattered. Not in the hospital room, not on the cold floor, not in each other’s secure and loving arms. For now, they wept. 

Openly, they wept. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments and kudos. I spend so much time on this fic, you have no idea. I always respond to comments and any detail you comment on will mean the world to me. If u felt emotions while reading this, leave a kudo. They make me not wanna give up ;-;
> 
> HEY I'M REPEATING MY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT DOWN HERE TOO:  
> So, I wanna try to post on my tumblr more, but it's hard because none of what I post over there gets as much attention as what I post here ;-;  
> After I finish this fic, I wanna write drabbles and stuff that my followers request, but I cannot do that unless I have, well, followers! So here's the dealio my dudes:  
> y'all should follow me on [my tumblr](https://cakepopple.tumblr.com/) and you should fill my inbox with drabble requests :-) not full length things like this fic, but short little prompts! As long as I'm comfy with them, and they're not super long, I will absolutely write them!! When I'm done with this fic, I'm going to reblog some of those numbered writing prompt things and y'all can send me numbers!! It doesn't necessarily have to be klance or vld either; I have other shows and games and movies and ships I'd ADORE writing stuff for, too!  
> I know that was a lot, but I felt like I should put that out there, since like I ain't charging for requests or anything... so y'all could totally just....... get lit drabbles....... for free....... as long as u follow me and stuff..... thats the tea.....


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